


Lucid

by neolith



Series: The Dream Walking-Series [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Abduction, Art, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Crime Fighting, Earthborn (Mass Effect), M/M, MEBB2017, References to Depression, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), mild AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 02:14:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11934198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neolith/pseuds/neolith
Summary: Mild AU with no Reapers where John Shepard harbours resentment towards the Alliance after surviving Akuze. Arrested for his refusal to rejoin service, Shepard drops from contact and, as days pass, his partner Kaidan Alenko begins to suspect foul play. When Kaidan starts investigating, it turns out there are other parties also interested in the veteran's whereabouts...Sequel tothe Salarian Suicide! Can be read as a stand-alone.





	Lucid

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to my beta [bioticsandheadshots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioticsandheadshots/pseuds/bioticsandheadshots) and to [bioticfox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ayambik/pseuds/bioticfox) for helping me through just in general.  
> Don't forget to go over to [twitter](https://twitter.com/lehonkArt/status/1069913023563919360), [instragram](https://www.instagram.com/p/BpcSaK_ltD3/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet) or [artstation](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LQqdP) and give the amazing lehonk some love for his AMAZING art!
> 
> This is my second MEBB and I decided to go with a sequel to my fic last year, as I'm that unoriginal. The fic is written in a way so that it can be read without first reading [the Salarian Suicide](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7346308), so if you want to read this story straight away you can.
> 
> A little about the universe of the story - I've imagined it to set in a world similar to the Mass Effect universe, but I have taken some freedoms to adapt it to the story. Since I love Omega, I wanted that setting, but gave it some law enforcement (loosely based on C-Sec, but like a grossly underfunded and understaffed C-Sec that is far more prone to corruption). Also taken some freedom with human biotics, greatly diminished the need for amplifiers. Most importantly - human biotics can do something called dream-walking! This means that they don't dream of their own, but rather enter other people's dreams.

 

In Omega, there was always something wrong. Mostly it hid away, but recently Kaidan paid more attention. The traces of gang wars had been part of his work for a long time. Working on the homicide unit at O-Sec, the most brutal incidents were under his very nose on a daily basis, but those weren't the faults that had Kaidan looking over his shoulder at every corner. Not a year ago he'd lost his work partner, not to death fortunately, but to a complicated case of corruption. As much as they'd made peace in the aftermath, trusting someone new wasn't all that easy. They'd since paired him with a krogan named Wrex who, while not seeming all too committed to the laws they were paid to uphold, at least didn't seem like the type to conceal serious misconduct. There wasn't exactly trust between the two of them, but Wrex appeared predictable enough that Kaidan felt at ease around him.

There were moments when Kaidan considered resigning, contemplating something different for himself. A clean slate with no history to keep him on edge and suspicious of every other person. Only new careers weren't easy to come by on Omega, especially not for someone formerly O-sec and Kaidan wasn't earning just his own keep anymore.

When Kaidan unlocked the studio apartment, the lights were on, illuminating a clutter made by two people rather than just his own mess of datapads and old take-out. Something smelled home cooked, if simple, and there was a half empty bottle of hot sauce on the table, barely visible from where Kaidan still stood in the doorway.  There were muted sounds of some vid playing in the background.

"Hello?"

Shepard didn't answer, which wasn't unusual. Kaidan had learnt by now that the veteran got lost in his own head a lot if left alone. He wasn't by the table though, nor on the tiny sofa barely large enough for the two of them, and not even in bed. Kaidan ultimately found him in the bathroom, dressed in sweats, but facing the shower with some fabric clutched in his hands.

"John?"

Broad shoulders lifted as Shepard filled his lungs with a deep breath. The air then slowly came out again as though he gave up on holding it in. When he turned around, Kaidan noticed he also held a lighter.

"Sorry," he said in that curt way of his. "My temper nearly got the better of me."

Shepard set the lighter down, then flipped the bundle of fabric over in his grip. A section of an embroidered Alliance logo revealed itself, golden thread on navy textile. It explained a lot, considering the events of the past couple of weeks. When Kaidan first met Shepard, he'd been a retired veteran struggling, both financially and mentally, after the Alliance had pretty much just dropped him following the catastrophe that transpired on Akuze. Then the dirty truth leaked out; of how Cerberus had orchestrated the massacre to pressure further weapons deals out of the Alliance. It'd been a successful strategy for Cerberus, and it turned out they'd used it more than just once.

Now, for whatever reason, the Alliance seemed adamant on getting Shepard back, but Shepard had his reservations.

"What about the doctor's evaluation?" Kaidan asked, as they'd requested one in hope of keeping Shepard off duty for a little longer. The resigned shake of Shepard's head was enough. He pushed past Kaidan, dropping the uniform on top of a pile of unsorted laundry, before sitting down by the table. Kaidan joined him, but waited for Shepard to continue.

"I'm well enough, apparently, and being around people with the same struggles would do me good," Shepard said, absentmindedly serving food onto Kaidan's plate, but then got lost in thought again before he got to serving himself. "Worst thing is I'm not even sure they are wrong about that, it's just... they have a thirty year plan for replacing all the Cerberus-made tech they currently have. Thirty years, Kaidan. That'd be what's left on my career, fighting with arms that got my comrades' blood on them. They gave me the uniform today and I told them they'd have greater success locking me up than getting me to serve with Cerberus gear."

Kaidan cringed, and pointed out:  
"You know they actually have jurisdiction to do just that."

They were both silent for a while, the turian sitcom banter of the vid at odds with the heavy mood in the room. The constant hum of the Omega ventilation lay as a background score, especially loud in this area, which was what had allowed them a space big enough for both of them on Kaidan's salary alone. If Kaidan focused enough, he could even hear some of the neighbors fighting, but he ignored both the shouts and the banging. Shepard's hands had stilled, so he took over serving him. It seemed to wake the veteran from whatever distant place he'd spaced off to.

"I'm sorry," Shepard said,  clearly distressed even though he hid it well. There was a flicker of his gaze, a discreet waver, that Kaidan knew wasn't there when he was relaxed, but it was the only response he hadn't quite managed to suppress. Whether it was military training or just a Shepard thing, the man had exceptional control of his emotional responses whenever there were eyes on him, even if those eyes were just Kaidan's. He acted on feelings, a lot, and Kaidan knew that because he knew him, but Shepard excelled in keeping up the appearance that reason was always his primary motivator. He always presented himself as tough, as someone accustomed to making the hard choices. Most people that met Shepard would be surprised at how much he actually mulled things over. "I've been a burden to you from day one, and now this."

Kaidan tried to intervene, to placate and forgive, but Shepard wouldn't have it.

"They were even offering a promotion," he explained. "And perhaps, if I gave it a shot I could change things from the inside, if only I wasn't so... hotheaded and angry about... about everything."

"Your anger is reasonable," Kaidan argued, but to no avail.

Shepard shook his head and silenced himself with the food. Judging by how he didn't even touch the hot sauce, it was a mechanical motion rather than an actual desire to eat. Kaidan couldn't stand it so he poured some sauce for him, but didn't know what else to say. When they were done, they squeezed onto the tiny sofa together, but they could just as well have watched a memorial segment given how grim they both were. Shepard sat absentmindedly doing biotic exercises with his left hand the entire time, fingers flexing and eliciting local, miniature barriers. Kaidan wanted to talk, but got stuck in looking for the right words as he watched Shepard's hand working away automatically. Blue flare, then dark, blue flare and then dark.

\---

When a week passed without anything happening, Kaidan stopped expecting the other shoe to drop. Life went on as humbly as before, both him and Shepard in a state of complacency where they just carried on. Working with Wrex was trying enough at times to prove an efficient distraction. Bored with paperwork, the krogan had taken a walk and come back with some really unhelpful conspiracy theories.

"You're just saying that because you have a bias against salarians," Kaidan insisted, as he tried to glance over the finished report, making sure that all the relevant pieces of evidence where listed at the end, by description and ID number. It was a little hard to focus with Wrex ranting at his neck, some new nonsense since his theory about the batarian in traffics department hadn't panned out.

"Nah," Wrex disagreed, not lifting a finger to help with the report, as if working with documents was beneath him. As always he had this posture that filled the space around him, claiming it for his own. His massive bulk certainly helped the impression. "This was an outsider. Too clean to be local. No one on Omega is vain enough to polish their armor. He stuck out like a live pyjak in a pit full of varrens."

Kaidan was about to further protest, when they were interrupted by a colleague.

"Kandros wants you in her office," the colleague said. "A new case for you."

To hell with double checking, Kaidan thought to himself and filed the report. The perpetrator in question had been caught red-handed, so the prosecutor would get easy work with them in any case.

Wrex seemed to have given up on the salarian, instead grumbling about their superior trying to sabotage their night out, as though missing one of the weekly work socials was some terrible tragedy. It was worth to note that Wrex was excited enough about these events to already have gotten them barred from their previously favored pub. If Kandros was indeed summoning them in attempt to keep Wrex especially away from the event, it wouldn't be entirely out of proportion.

The case that greeted them, it turned out, was not going to cause any delays tonight. Kaidan was however rather confounded as to why it was handed to them.

"This is a cold case," he pointed out, looking down at the picture of a little girl, gone over a decade and a half already. Quickly scrolling through the file, he confirmed that a body had never been found and while death was a likely fate for the girl at this stage, it was strange for such a case to end up in the homicide department. "Why now, why homicide?"

"Because I've got nothing better to put in your hands," Kandros said plainly, with a dismissive wave of the hand. "And there've been inquiries from higher up. They want fresh eyes on what could've happened to her. You cracked that Cerberus conspiracy case, so someone suggested it couldn't hurt if you gave it a shot. But only when there's time to spare, alright?"

"Right," Kaidan replied, skeptical. He glanced down at the girl again, only seven in the picture. Jennifer. Biotic. Kaidan felt a little sick for a moment, drawing the parallel that if biotic abilities were the reason for whatever had been done to her, then he could very well himself have been the subject of the file. It was just one of those moments when it struck him how incredibly fortunate he was, all things considered.

"Someone?" Wrex asked, almost as an afterthough, and it was a good question.

"Get out of my office," was all Kandros allowed, and while she hadn't had the position long, they hadn't needed long to learn she wasn't a superior to argue with. Not that Wrex appeared to want to, happy to be out and able to join the work social after all. As Kaidan trailed after him, his omni-tool pinged with an incoming message. Reading it he stopped, surprised.

"What?" Wrex asked, when Kaidan failed to follow along for a few steps.

"Nothing," Kaidan lied, staring for a few more seconds at the message.

_Mind if I join you tonight?_ _  
_ _\- Shepard_

\---

When Kaidan and his closest colleagues arrived at _The Plateau_ , Shepard was already there, standing awkwardly to the side behind the smokers. The way he stood hunched, alone and staring distantly towards the ground reminded Kaidan painfully of the man that he had first laid eyes on not a year ago, at a pub called Shappi's. The Shepard back then had been so broken that Kaidan still wondered at the recovery he'd made, after finding that Akuze hadn't been his fault. That kind of remorse wasn't something you just shook though. The days when Kaidan didn't wonder, he worried.

Someone exited _The Plateau_ , startling Shepard out of his reveries. As he looked up, Kaidan got a good look of his grey eyes going from blank to joyful. It did things to Kaidan's insides, and he only hoped that it didn't show. If Traynor noticed she wouldn't let him live it down for weeks. She was a valuable friend, but a man could only stand so much teasing.

"Hey," Kaidan spoke as Shepard pushed away from the wall to approach him. "Did you wait long?"

Some of the O-Sec officers simply strolled on, offering a nod in greeting before entering the club, while Wrex did a double take before humming in understanding. Shepard just shook his head and smiled, inclining his head towards the entrance in suggestion. Kaidan grabbed him by the hand in response, holding him in place for a while.

"You alright?" Kaidan asked.

Shepard's smile mellowed and he drew a deep breath. For a moment Kaidan thought he was building up for some big announcement, but then all he got was a nod, the smile returning if not quite as wide as before.

"I will be," Shepard allowed, giving Kaidan's hand a quick squeeze before they went in. When Shepard offered to order for them, Kaidan should probably have given him a heads up that they did serve beer here, but you'd have to specifically request _Eden Stouts_. If you called it anything else, the batarian bartender would have no idea what you were asking for. Not having been informed however, Shepard came back with something turbid and green in a tall glasses.

"I have no idea what this is," he confessed, and they both laughed together. It felt good, to laugh, like they hadn't done that in too long and the surge of fondness that hit Kaidan at that was almost painful. He remembered how cautious Shepard had been with his affections in the beginning, terrified of yet another loss. Things were different now, and they seemed better, only Kaidan never dared to ask. When Shepard was down, he was too afraid of making things worse by bringing it up and in the happy moments, like now... Kaidan just didn't have the heart.

So instead they danced. Shepard sucked at it, which they both knew and which was half the point. He did this little shuffle that was utterly ridiculous, but Kaidan loved how pleased with himself he looked as he did it. When it went on for a little too long, Kaidan pulled him close and they laughed again. The moment was such a rare blessing that Kaidan willfully did not question it.

Later they sat down with the other O-Sec officers, seating themselves on the couch, their hips pressed together. Shepard didn't say much, even on topics that weren't O-sec related, but his thumb stroked Kaidan's thigh the entire time. It was a wonder that no one noticed, because Kaidan felt his skin heating up with arousal as the night wore along. When he ultimately called it a night, Shepard gave him a quick squeeze just above the knee before he got up.

They didn't touch a single time the entire walk home, but the air between them was so charged that Kaidan nearly felt bowled over anyway.

As soon as they got inside, it was like the trap snapped, all the pent up energy releasing at once and flooding their tiny hallway. In their struggle to get close fast, they nearly knocked over their gear locker. As something started falling from on top of it, reflexes kicked in and both of them reacted by trying to capture the object in a mass effect field. As a result, the object instead got flicked away by the two clashing fields, ricocheting against the ceiling then sliding across the floor. Turned out to be nothing more than a can of shoe polish. The tension broke then, and they laughed again.

"You've got good reflexes," Kaidan commented, and clarified. "With your biotics."

Shepard hummed. They were both aware that on instinct Shepard had always been good with his biotic abilities. It was only when he was consciously thinking about doing something that he seemed unable to quite do it.

The mirth died down, and Shepard lost a little of his air. He fell back against the door, the mere couple of inches allowing Kaidan to seek out his eyes in the soft hallway light. The mood shifted significantly, to something heavy and unreadable, but very unlike before. This was a moment, Kaidan realized, when perhaps they could talk.

"Tonight's been different," he commented, still hesitant and afraid to ruin something. What if he'd misjudged? "Something happened?"

"Yeah," Shepard acknowledged, but didn't elaborate.

Kaidan could see a myriad of thoughts through the firm look on his face, but Shepard voiced none of them, conveying some feeling instead through a firm grip on Kaidan's hips. The distance between them seemed to sway, and Kaidan couldn't tell whether that was him or Shepard moving.

"Make me forget everything but you," Shepard demanded. "Just for tonight."  
Closing the distance between them entirely, chest to toes, Shepard bared his neck for Kaidan.

Whatever conversation Kaidan had had in mind fell away, because this, this he could do. This they had always been good at and he molded to Shepard like he was made specifically to be there; to secure him up against the door as though falling apart would physically hurt them.

\---

\---

Someone was moaning, the details were all fuzzy and warm and the entire space was unbalanced. Kaidan didn't need to sense more of the situation to know he'd fallen into a sex dream, which was always awkward. He focused on a sensation that contrasted the current and pushed. It took a few seconds but ultimately it worked and he ended up somewhere else. This dreamer was on flat, horizontal rooftops some place with a sky that was light and pale blue in hue. The overexposed landscape took some time getting used to, but as Kaidan's eyes adjusted, he found the dream's most notable feature was that it was bare. It looked eerily like depression.

"Upstairs neighbor," a voice clarified, and before Kaidan had the time to turn, a hand had snuck its way into his. It was Shepard, eyes fixed on a man sitting serenely at the edge of a roof a couple of blocks away from them. The man was too far away for Kaidan to pick out the details and he was a little embarrassed to admit he had no idea who the upstairs neighbor was. The only familiar bit in the dream was the red Armax Arsenal logo, spinning in the distance.

"Veteran, recently widowed," Shepard explained and tugged at Kaidan's hand, away from the dream. "Nothing we can do here. I'll talk to him tomorrow. Let's go."

And they went. Kaidan was only recently figuring it out, with Shepard's tutoring, but Shepard navigated dreams like isles at a supermarket. While Shepard lazily strolled through scenario after scenario, taking his time to arrive some place that he probably had in mind already, Kaidan knew he'd be lost instantly if their hands let go. Had Kaidan had a bigger ego, it would've smarted to be so greatly surpassed by someone who only a year ago even realized they were biotic. It was only in dreams though that Shepard took to biotics like a fish to water. Awake, it was all a bit of a mess where Shepard was the one needing tutoring to manage even basic skills. Still, Shepard was fast improving there as well. In little time he'd be within grasping range of his full potential. No wonder the Alliance wanted him back.

They stopped, the mottled impressions between dreams solidifying into something a bit more tangible as they landed mentally into the new space. This landscape was lush and detailed, vegetation wrapping around buildings that looked slightly shrunk in proportion. Oddly enough, the plants looked rather blue instead of green. Shepard seemed well acquainted with the dream, finding a path behind the foliage and taking them down to an open square.

"What is this place?" Kaidan asked, taking in plants that looked unfamiliar and the occasional bug on the ground. Curiously there didn't seem to be any flying insects or even birds. Kaidan paused to inspect a flower with petals in a deeply saturated red that stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Irune, Volus homeworld," Shepard replied. Reaching around Kaidan, he gently touched the outer rim of one of the petals and the flower snapped shut. "Or a dream version of it at least. This plant is native to Sur'Kesh. Little point of flowers in worlds with no bees to pollinate them."

Kaidan looked up and took in the dream with a new understanding, seeing the things that fit in with a high gravity world, and appreciating how a dream could skip logic as it pleased. On the real Irune they'd be crawling on the ground and choking by now, while ammonia would've ripped their cells to shreds.

"Whose dream is it?"

"My old neighbor from back in the slums. She always has these really peaceful dreams, so I sometimes go here to catch a break," Shepard said and found a spot to sit down. Kaidan could understand why his partner would go here, but the Quarian slums... that was quite a lot further away than he'd expected, off the station even.

As they both sat down, feeling something akin to grass beneath their bodies and looking up at pale clouds scattered across a bronze-tinted sky, Kaidan wanted to express his surprise - only the peace didn't last. The knocking was really distant at first, and it reminded Kaidan of the woodpeckers from outside Vancouver up until it didn't. The pitch was too deep, made by something far too blunt to be a beak, and the pattern frequency too slow. Then it morphed into something of clarity as they slowly woke up, a sluggish process when you dream-walked so far outside of your own body. Shepard was faster, always faster back into full alert - a remaining side effect of his military experience, one that had kept him alive on Akuze. As Kaidan was only sitting up, eyes still bleary with sleep, Shepard was already by the kitchenette. He slipped a spare gun from their top drawer before silently sliding up to the front door. After peeking through the spy hole, he thumbed the safety back on, removed the thermal clip and shoved both gun and clip on top of the coat hanger. From bed, Kaidan couldn't see who was outside when Shepard opened, but his salute told Kaidan all he needed to know. Whoever was at the door was Alliance and of rank higher than Shepard's.

"Lieutenant Commander John Shepard. We are to escort you to Arcturus Station for trial over desertion charges. If you'd come with us peacefully, we won't have to make this any harder than it already is."

"Now?" Shepard asked, after a pause. He must've gotten an affirmative, because he followed with another question. "May I get dressed first?"

"Be quick," the Alliance representative spoke, little sympathy in his tone, but Shepard held his back straight as he looked for clothes. Kaidan stepped in, picking up the new uniform, holding it up as a suggestion. Their eyes met and the look in Shepard's eyes was so resigned, so sorry, that Kaidan could barely resist looking away. Instead, he took a deep breath and tried to be brave.

"It's only a trial," he said, even if there was nothing _only_ about it considering the truth to the claim.

Kaidan had hoped that they would've been a little more understanding of Shepard's reasons. He shushed the thought in his head that said that Shepard might not come home from this, not in a long while. One of the Alliance officers stepped into the apartment, but Kaidan paid them no attention beyond noting they were buttoned all the way up into their light duty uniforms; focusing instead on Shepard, slipping the belt through the loops in his pants for him while he pulled on an Alliance undershirt. As Shepard reached for the shirt and jacket, the officer for some reason lost all remaining patience.

"Enough," the man yelled, instantly joined by a colleague that helped twist Shepard's arms behind his back to cuff him. Shepard swore, possibly in pain, and got a sharp tug as reward. Protesting the rough treatment only got Kaidan ignored so he followed on his final instinct, stopping them long enough to place a quick but firm kiss on Shepard's lips while cupping his cheeks. He wanted to hold on, to not let the man go, but the officers were as adamant as they were rough.

"Kaidan," Shepard said, but then the door was slammed shut, cutting off anything else that might've been said. Minutes passed, but it could as well have been hours, as Kaidan just stood there staring at the door, shell shocked, trying to understand what had just happened. Letting his gaze drop to the floor, he realized they hadn't even let Shepard take his shoes. It was so unlike anything Kaidan thought he knew of the Alliance, but then again, he hadn't been there to see how violently Shepard had denied that promotion and return to service. Still... something didn't add up.

Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed the blanket and sat down on the couch, activating his omni-tool. He read anything he could come across on the intranet regarding Alliance protocols for deserters until the morning alarm rang. By then he'd only gotten more questions and no real answers. What was going on?

His mind was still spinning with uncertainty and worry as he stepped outside, some half hour later. The door hadn't even shut behind him as he was approached by a man in sweats. The man's skin was dark, his coiled hair and beard trimmed short and he wore a gentle smile that didn't reach his eyes. In fact, he looked like he'd had as bad a night as Kaidan. Something about him was vaguely familiar, but Kaidan was too exhausted to bother in the moment.

"I'm sorry," Kaidan apologized, angling his body slightly away even if he wasn't walking off just yet. "I'm on my way to work, and... is it something important?"

The man seemed to struggle for words for a bit and Kaidan nearly didn't give him enough time to come up with something to say. He just wanted to get going and get the day over and done with.

"It's...," the man started, then stopped, shaking his head. "I thought it was important, but... maybe it was just silly. It can wait. I live upstairs from you and Shepard. Come up, when you have time to spare?"

Then it clicked, upstairs neighbor. What had Shepard said? Recently widowed. If the man saw Kaidan's face falling briefly as he placed him, he was good enough not to comment on it. There was a slight pinch in his brow though that could mean he had indeed noticed.

"Right," Kaidan said, and belatedly reached out a hand to shake, as this was the first time they'd ever actually spoken to one another. "I'm Kaidan."

"Steve Cortez," the man introduced himself, marginally more formal than Kaidan and for how harried he looked his handshake was surprisingly firm. "Do come over, when time allows."

Kaidan nodded as their hands separated, and rushed off to O-Sec where he completely forgot all about the conversation until much later.

\---

While Kaidan's gut from the start pinged something as amiss with how Shepard was removed from their home, in the middle of their sleep cycle - Kaidan had at first dismissed that sensation as a byproduct of his personal investment in the situation. Of course it felt wrong when he cared so deeply for the removed man, but consequences for refusing service were only logical, even if the nature of the arrest was a bit harsher than expected. So he'd tried his best to downplay that itch at the back of his mind that was begging him to look deeper into things, to mistrust the most apparent explanations for the series of events. Thus he hid the itch beneath the rock in his belly that weighed painfully as he worried.

Then three days passed without a word. Three days that ought to be sufficient to reach Arcturus Station and go through whatever processing was necessary. Three days where Shepard ought to have had plenty of opportunity to contact him, let him know he was alright or at the very least (more in line with Shepard the Soldier) just give Kaidan a minimal summary of the updates. But there was nothing.

When three days spilled into four, Kaidan had enough.

"There's something off," he muttered during lunch. He sat with Samantha Traynor at the public food court. Since the life-changing corruption case last year, she was the only colleague he'd trust with this conversation.

Traynor sat opposite him, poking around at the main mush of what supposedly was the _"levo-special"_ of the day that sported an unappetizing color of some shade of gray. While Kaidan's meal looked a little better, he felt no more keen to eat it than Traynor felt about hers. There was some sort of salad on his plate, but it looked awfully dry, and the non-alcoholic lager he had to chug it down with just made him nostalgic in a way that wasn't helping right now.

"What's on your plate at least resembles food," Traynor commented, her eyes abandoning her tray to glance up at the news broadcast that aired behind Kaidan. Whatever it was, it held her attention as she attempted a first bite, but didn't keep her from grimacing at the flavor - or lack thereof.

"The food's terrible as always," Kaidan said, despite not having made it as far as tasting it yet. "I'm talking about Shepard."

Traynor tore her eyes away from the projection then, surprised, and she gaped for half a second, food on her fork forgotten midair as she stared at Kaidan.

"You haven't heard from him yet?"

Kaidan shook his head. They were silent for a while, the noise of the court permeating between them. Kaidan could hear the news, something about increased human presence on the Citadel, before the segment cut over to trade market reports.

"You know," Traynor spoke, poking around in her food again. "I haven't really heard of soldiers actually getting arrested for refusing service. Stripped of gear and implants and left without compensation, sure. But arrested?"

This was something that had struck Kaidan too, although he had heard of a few arrests recently. They were rare and only ever ranking officers. Shepard did fit the bill, but still.

"Perhaps the Alliance is getting more desperate for new recruits," he reasoned, trying to soothe himself, convince himself that this wasn't as bad as it sounded. It was how his mind had battled its way through the last four days, beating the worry into a state of submission which rung false like petty platitudes. "Willing humans don't come in an endless supply, I guess."

Traynor watched him as he poked at a piece of the salad, making a show of dissecting it. Her eyes were sort of glazed, inattentive, and she rather looked like she was biting back words that she wanted to say. She shifted once, then twice, before she gave in and simply spoke her mind.

"Could he have done something else, something worse?"

Kaidan hated how he couldn't outright just deny that hypothesis, but truth was that Shepard had yet only spoken extremely little of his service. Kaidan and Shepard's history together was short and had progressed far too fast, the two of them already cohabitating. Kaidan had pushed things forward quite rapidly, his conscience unable to stand the thought of his partner living in what essentially had been a shed in the slums. It was a shortcut, but only in the practical sense. There were no shortcuts to getting to know a person and with someone as reserved as Shepard, this was doubly true. Considering what the man had been through on Akuze, Kaidan couldn't blame him and that was why he'd given him time and space, letting Shepard decide when and where to open up. Which was why, beyond Akuze, Kaidan barely knew his partner at all.

"That's an awful long silence," Traynor evoked Kaidan out of his reveries.

"I don't know," he offered honestly. "I want to say no, that that's impossible, but... I can't guarantee that."

Traynor gave this sympathetic smile that only had a hint of a cringe in it. Not that she had a stellar record in relationships lately, ( _"why are all the pretty ones straight?"_ as she would say,) but she had been questioning many times over if maybe they weren't rushing things a bit.

"I'm sure that whatever he's done, he's done with good reason," she placated, surprisingly efficient because if nothing else Kaidan felt he could at least believe in that.

" _If_ he's done something," Kaidan allowed himself to protest.

" _If_ he's done something," Traynor quickly agreed.

The financial segment on the news with somewhat comical timing switched over to discussing the fallout of the Augeas Galactic leak - the leak that had revealed Cerberus true colors. Traynor went for upping the mood with a joke about how they were still on about that, as though it wasn't the case that had changed everything for all of O-Sec as well as for Shepard. Kaidan laughed meekly on top of his worry, finally taking a bite of his salad. It tasted like ashes in his mouth and he couldn't tell whether that was the actual flavor or if it was the worry numbing even the sensation of taste.

The bench suddenly bounced, nearly tipping and only quick reflexes kept Kaidan from sliding into the rough side of his new, krogan partner. The woman next to Kaidan hadn't reacted as quickly and apologized briefly while glaring daggers at Wrex who didn't seem to take much notice, busy with setting down his tray with a satisfied smirk. He clearly did not struggle with his appetite the way his human colleagues did. Whatever was on Wrex's plate was large, juicy and a quarter of it gone in just a couple of bites.

"The salarian is back," he announced, picking up the napkin that came with his tray to wipe stray sauce running down his chin. It looked ridiculous, the tissue far too petite against the enormous krogan jaw. "And he's been tailing you all day. Have you pissed off a salarian lately?"

Recognizing this as a follow-up on Wrex's most recent conspiracy, Kaidan had to consciously resist the urge to roll his eyes.

"Where is he now then?" he asked, noting in the corner of his eye that Traynor was straining herself to not search the room from where she sat. She wasn't as used to Wrex and his antics, not knowing to take what he said with a grain of salt.

Wrex on the other hand seemed as relaxed and unbothered as usual.  
"Gone," he said casually, ripping off another chunk of whatever his meal was. It had fibers like meat at least. "Scared him off. You should've seen his face when I explained how krogans used to eat his kind."

Wrex let out a bark of a laugh at his own prank, but Kaidan wasn't amused.

"Thanks," Kaidan said, rich on the sarcasm in his tone. He was too tired to try to correct the krogan's inappropriate remark.

"You're welcome," Wrex allowed, clearly getting that Kaidan wasn't happy, but too satisfied with himself to let it spoil his lunch. Realizing he was fishing in an empty pond, expecting anything else from Wrex, Kaidan sighed and sagged in his seat, relaxing but not really enjoying it.

"I guess it could be related to that Eclipse case last week," he mused, if he were to humor Wrex's claim at all. It earned him another huff of a laugh from Wrex.

"He didn't wear their armor," the krogan argued, and made a motion reminiscent of a shrug. "But I guess he'd make even worse a tail if he trailed you all branded."

\---

Waking up on day five with still no new messages, Kaidan just couldn't stand remaining passive in waiting anymore. With something like tunnel vision, he went straight to checking his messages, to calling in sick. He'd tried calling up the civilian service line at Arcturus Station already on day one, but without a registered partnership he'd been strictly informed that that was a closed door. Kaidan knew from experience though that people were far more willing to bend the rules if you met them face to face.

Alliance had very little presence on Omega, for obvious reasons, but with so many veterans settling on the station, there was a small information desk where former soldiers came to pick up their pension, and new recruits came to sign up. Kaidan had always found that bizarre; young humans barely into adulthood signing their life away after standing in line surrounded by the probability of their future. Shepard had only shrugged when Kaidan had pondered this aloud, mentioning something about running with street gangs and if you messed up, military service sometimes was your only ticket out. In retrospect, Kaidan wondered if that had been Shepard's own story.

Getting to the information desk, Kaidan had to take one of the commuter elevators and even that sparked bittersweet memories, longing, and ultimately worry. He tried to focus on the view. The sea of lights was actually quite beautiful from afar, the smog looking more like a visual effect than something that could slowly kill you. He tried to find a spot interesting enough to arrest his gaze, but it wandered back into elevator cage, caught by the sight of the shaft swishing past through the cracks in the door. Somewhere, in another part of Omega, there was a shaft scarred by Shepard's biotics. It was a secret that only the two of them knew.

The elevator stopped, the doors parting at the fifth floor of the Zeta District, and Kaidan stepped off at his destination. The area was bleak - bleaker than the rest of Omega save for perhaps the docks. Aside from Kaidan and some traffic officers, there wasn't much of an O-Sec presence here. This area was popular amongst small scale dealers, but O-Sec let it be, saving resources for dealing with bigger fish. By the time Kaidan reached the information desk, he could potentially have made three arrests and it was only a twenty minute walk.

Kaidan found the information desk more lively than expected. Aside from the pair of clerks in the booth, there were soldiers pitching life in the Alliance Navy to skinny kids that played disinterested. Mostly they were goofing around with some nonsense on their pirated omni-tools, but occasionally their eyes would dart to the various pictures and payment charts that the recruiters were showing. As Kaidan stood in line, the kids had him distracted enough that he failed to notice the queue moving until one of the clerks called out to him.

"How may I help you?" the young woman said with an urgency that suggested it wasn't the first time she'd vied for his attention. Kaidan apologized while quickly covering the distance remaining between him and the booth. The clerk sat in a prim uniform that appeared to not have seen a day in the field, behind thick glass with a small speaker above a thin slot for identification and paperwork. Curiously, the uniform's collar button was already missing, despite otherwise looking new. As for the paperwork slot, it probably was a necessity as they stripped veterans of their omni-tools upon discharge. At least that had been the case for Shepard.

"I need to get in touch with my significant other," Kaidan requested, glancing back at the kids and the recruiters. One of the kids was signing something and leaving a fingerprint, while another was dragged off by a third youngster.

"Where are they stationed?" the clerk asked, tapping away at her console.

"Arcturus Station," Kaidan said, wanting to see how far he could get with his queries without explaining the full situation. "He was relieved of duty until a week ago, so not sure if he's popped up in the system yet. I tried contacting him, but maybe they replaced his omni-tool? It was civilian grade, so they'd have to, right?"

Kaidan hoped the story had just enough truth mixed in with the total lies to get him at least something.

"Service number?"

Thankfully, Kaidan had learnt Shepard's service number by heart thanks to all the filing they'd done to get him out of the slums and through multiple overdue health checks, job applications and more. As long as you knew the relevant personal ID numbers, many clerks never bothered to look up if you were actually sanctioned to access the information you requested. The woman must've found something on her console, because she paused, eyes darting across the screen in a linear pattern, one row at the time. Kaidan looked at her, expectantly, eyes falling again to the missing button on her otherwise pristine uniform. Then the woman sighed as she pushed away from the console, clasping her hands in front of her in some sort of mimicked gesture.  

"You said a week ago?" she asked, with a forced pity in her tone. It didn't sound like the tone that would deliver disastrous news, but it did sound like he wouldn't like what she was about to say as he nodded.

"It's been five days," Kaidan confirmed.

The woman sighed again, for effect. There was an underlying, silent and belittling _"oh dear"_ in that sigh and the entire way she'd positioned her body and even her face.

"Are you sure you haven't just been dumped?" she asked, sweetly, if sickly so. "Your boy was clearly lying to you, because he is not enlisted again. And I've checked with customs. He hasn't even left the station yet. Maybe he just left you."

"No," Kaidan let out with almost a laugh, because he couldn't believe what had just been suggested to him. "No, okay, I need to be more forthcoming. He didn't leave. He was escorted away. By Alliance personnel! There has to be something in your files!"

The clerk returned to her console, her mouth a thin line and she made this little shake of her head as though she couldn't believe that she was still humoring him and his queries. She wrapped up her typing with two taps at a command on the far right, holding still for a couple of heartbeats before she was satisfied.

"I'm not at liberty to tell you this, so I hope you understand that you should feel really grateful," she paved way for whatever information she'd scrounged up. Kaidan almost held his breath in expectation. "He does have a red bar, which would indicate an issued warning, but for someone of his rank there is normally three warnings before an arrest, but maybe he got caught in the act of something and taken straight away. He hasn't yet passed through customs though."

Kaidan recognized a wall when he hit one and thanked the woman for her time. As an afterthought he gestured towards her collar and informed her she'd lost a button. The information she'd given him had hardly helped, but he understood to appreciate when someone pushed the boundaries a little for you.

The clerk then adjusted the collar a bit, revealing a concealed button instead of the brass one that Kaidan had noticed on Alliance uniforms before.

"Thank you, but that's alright," she said, again sickeningly sweet. "That bulky button went away in the redesigns."

Kaidan was about to turn and leave when he stopped, overwhelmed with a rush of understanding needing one answer to verify a horrific suspicion.

"When did the uniforms change?"

\---

Kaidan sat on their bed, on Shepard's side, holding the uniform jacket that'd been left behind and thumbing at the collar. The button was concealed, in accordance to the redesigns. To be absolutely sure, Kaidan had already checked public Alliance information regarding the new uniform, confirming what the clerk had already told him. The old uniforms had been taken out of use just two days before the arrest. The fabricated arrest. Had he just stood by, accepting, as someone illegally abducted his partner? He was still trying to swallow this, what it meant, when his omni-tool signaled an incoming call.

"One of these days you're going to get me into some serious trouble," Traynor opened with, and Kaidan could hear tapping at a terminal in the background. "If anyone asks, I did not realize that the camera you requested was angled at _your_ door. I trusted you and simply assumed it was for a case. Why do you want the footage of Shepard leaving anyway?"

Kaidan sighed, and explained his discovery about the uniforms in brief detail.

"What? You mean he was kidnapped?" Traynor exclaimed, briefly pausing in the typing.

"That's what I suspect," Kaidan confirmed. "Whoever they were, they were not Alliance."

"Well, shit," Traynor said, before they both quieted for a bit, only Traynor's typing echoing over the line until it pinged on Kaidan's end, signaling an incoming file transfer.

"That's the footage, with as much a margin I could fit into the package," Traynor said. It would cover at most half an hour, but would still take quarter of an hour to download because of poor coverage in the block.  "Interestingly enough, there is an hour long blank in the footage the day after, noted down as repair work. Don't know if that is important."

"Could be," Kaidan said, though it seemed unlikely to be connected. He got off the bed to step out on the walkway outside. One less layer of walls could sometimes save minutes.

"Is there anything else I can do?" Traynor offered after both of them had fallen silent just a moment too long. "Get you anything? Keep Wrex off your back?"

"I don't think you need to worry about Wrex," he said as the front door swooshed close behind him, cutting off the warm light that had spilled over his back and leaving him in the semi-dark. "Have never heard a word from him outside of work, ever, so doubt he'll start now."

"I don't know about that," Traynor said, a little hushed and closer to her mouth piece than before. "He was on again at lunch today about that salarian stalker. Claimed he saw him again, sniffing about near the third floor exit."

"Could be he's actually tailing Wrex. I was not around today," Kaidan pointed out, leaning forward onto the railing that kept him from falling down into an abyss, spanning some sixty floors before ending in a trade square below.  Even though there were plenty of lights down there, the square looked concealed in shadows, thanks to pollution.

"Yeah, could be," Traynor acquiesced. "Would make more sense for Wrex to attract a tail than you, considering his stories from his mercenary days. If they're at all true. You think he really did take out twenty armed batarians all on his own, with nothing but an iron pipe and while drunk on an entire bottle of Ryncol?"

"I've seen Wrex on a bottle of Ryncol and he barely seemed tipsy, so wouldn't be so fast to discredit him," Kaidan pointed out, tilting his eyes up a bit, watching out between buildings as far as the sight was clear. While Traynor chatted on about Wrex and all his krogan extravaganza, Kaidan peered through the shuttle traffic, catching sight of the large red Armax Arsenal logo, spinning in the distance. He then remembered where he'd last seen the sign and turned around to glance up at the apartment above his and Shepard's. Light was on, enough to shine like a beacon out of the single, small window. He remembered seeing the bare landscape of the dream, remembered Shepard mentioning knowing the neighbor, a widow, and an intention to visit. He also remembered Shepard when they first met, a man that had lost direction and too much else. A man that had only been a shadow of the man he'd become, and probably previously been. Maybe that understanding of fading away after service, after loss, was something that the two veterans shared.

The omni-tool suddenly beeped, signaling the transfer was done.

"Sorry," Kaidan said, interrupting Traynor who was concluding her rant on Wrex. "I need to go. Thank you for the files."

Traynor sighed, and because she was a good friend she didn't call him on not paying attention to her, not even when she'd gone out of her way to help him.

"I meant what I said before," she said, before letting him off the line. "If there's anything else I can do, let me know. I know it's been a rough year for you, but don't forget I'm here, alright?"

"Alright," Kaidan said, returning inside.

\---

The footage opened to the empty street just outside the apartment, lights slightly flickering and the camera poorly compensating for the variation in light. Kaidan activated a filter that stabilized the image a little bit, just before the abductors appeared. They went straight for the door, showing no doubt whatsoever. The numbering on the doors were subtle, so whoever could pick the correct door immediately would already have to be acquainted with the door, which was unsettling.

Roughly a minute ticked away before Shepard appeared and though the angle was different, Kaidan knew what followed as though it happened just now rather than days ago. Knowing, however, that these people weren't Alliance had a huge impact on how Kaidan viewed every single little aggression. It had seemed awful enough then, when there at least seemed to be a promise of laws and regulations keeping Shepard safe. Now every push and shove seemed like a threat, or a promise of worse things to come. Kaidan felt cold all over at the eventualities.

The group dragged Shepard through the door, and Kaidan glimpsed himself briefly before it shut. There was the spy hole in the door, and Kaidan knew just how widely the view reached and it seemed the abductors did too. Just out of sight from the wide range of the lens, one of them shoved a cloth into Shepard's mouth and pressed a taser gun against the bare skin on his neck. The other two helped out by firmly holding Shepard's convulsing body, keeping him from falling or escaping the pain. Words were then spoken close to Shepard's ear but they were far too low to be picked up by the camera. Whatever they were, Shepard mustn't have liked them because only a couple of steps further forward he started fighting their grip on him, hard, with a blue sheen flaring up across his skin. If only he'd been better trained with his biotics outside of dreams, maybe he could've managed to blast them away from him. Instead he tried to pull the cloth from his mouth, but one of the abductors were too quick, removing Shepard's belt to secure it around his head  and in between his teeth to keep the cloth in place. Another one stabbed something into Shepard's back and for a horrible moment Kaidan thought it was a knife.

It wasn't a knife, but a syringe. Shepard fought it, but quickly the fight went out of him, muscles going lax and his entire body sagging. There were still the occasional jerks, as though Shepard pushed all he had left in him for a few last attempts. The attempts were no match against three strong adults however, and they easily used their weight to press Shepard down onto the ground. As they laid him down, his head disappeared out of frame. Kaidan fought the urge to stop watching; tried to tamper down on the overwhelming guilt over how he'd been less than twenty feet away and not even noticed.

Two of them searched Shepard's body closely with some handheld scanners, while the third looked up and seemed to notice the surveillance camera. Kaidan heard a fragment of a curse as the person drew a gun, firing right at the camera. By some miracle the bullet didn't quite hit the target and while it cracked the lens, the feed still continued. It was hard to see through the broken glass, but at least Kaidan saw them tossing something on the ground and stomping on it. There was also a brief, cracking sound before they started hauling Shepard's body away and out of frame entirely. With no more visual to give him clues, Kaidan raised the volume and closed his eyes, desperately listening for any one final clue to help him out.

Silence stretched, on and on, and Kaidan gave up. He let the surveillance vid keep rolling as he started pondering the implications, possible motives - trying to not think of Shepard's fate.

What he knew was this - Shepard had been abducted. Whoever had abducted him had wanted him alive, and they were not afraid of using pain as an intimidation tactic. The abductors must also have had contacts to get hands on recently retired Alliance uniforms, and probably also a source for information to be able to time the abduction the way they had. Shepard had been gone for five days.  Anything beyond this was merely speculation at this point.

Kaidan needed more data in order to progress. In desperate hope he decided to review the abduction footage a second time, just in case there was something he'd missed. Looking down at the omni-tool holoscreen, he noticed that a dark spot of something was visible on the ground, between the cracks in the lens. With no living thing in sight on the footage, Kaidan sort of forgot it was still rolling and went straight to zooming in. Playing with various filters to get more information out of the image, Kaidan didn't immediately notice the shadow that fell over the area.

The vid cut out, having run its full course. As he rewound the footage, it zoomed back out to full view again and then he saw it, the shadow and the flicker of something in the right hand corner. The figure was only there for a precious few frames before the footage cut, so Kaidan had to pause and skip one frame at the time to get a proper look.

What he saw had him calling Traynor again.

"Yes?" Traynor answered, tone a little distant as though her mind was occupied elsewhere. "Got anything?"

"I need you to bring up the end of the footage you sent me," Kaidan said. "And the footage that immediately follows, and then get Wrex to tell you whether or not that's the salarian tail that he's been spotting."

As eloquently as ever, Traynor let out a low _"shit."_

On the screen, pitch black eyes set in a unusually grey face stared back. Kaidan committed that face to memory and swore that if the salarian was involved - he _would_ catch him.

\---

"So, your boyfriend pissed off a salarian?" Wrex broached the subject the next day as they stood in an abandoned housing unit that was supposedly connected to their cold case girl. It had been the small family's home, but when the girl had been abducted while there, in their very own apartment, the parents had insisted on locking it down until the case was solved.

"My boyfriend doesn't concern you," Kaidan said, checking details on the copy of the file he'd saved to his omni-tool. A couple of pages in, it mentioned the parents were now also missing. To afford to keep paying for housing they no longer lived in, they'd gone to Mindoir, just in time for a slaver raid. What kept the housing untouched now were rumors that it was somehow cursed. All in all, it was an awfully tragic story.

"Gloves," Kaidan reminded, when he saw Wrex picking at some fabric discarded in a corner, earning himself a grunt. "And for all we know he could very well be tailing me, like you first suspected."

"He came specifically to pick up whatever they removed from your guy," Wrex pointed out, opening some drawers now and still not using gloves. Kaidan really hoped the perpetrator was krogan as well, because that would make it awkward for Wrex, with his fingerprints all over. Maybe it would teach him a lesson, drive home to him that evidence sometimes _did_ matter in court, even if he was right in that the majority of homicide cases on Omega were solved through confessions or catching the perpetrator in the act of another, similar murder. And maybe Kaidan also wished trouble on Wrex because he felt uncomfortable with a work partner he barely knew knowing about something he considered private. He was angry at Traynor too, for not limiting the footage she showed Wrex better, but she wasn't around to be mad at.

"It could've been a coincidence," Kaidan argued about the footage of the salarian who had indeed picked up whatever item it was that the abductors had so vehemently stomped on. Because of the lens being so badly cracked, they hadn't been able to get good enough a view of the item to figure out what it was, but the salarian tail had taken it and promptly left. Secretly he agreed with Wrex, the salarian was definitely connected, but such an admission wouldn't get Wrex out of his hair.

"And Traynor is straight," Wrex laughed. "That salarian is involved. I bet my balls on it. All four."

Kaidan was gritting his teeth in effort to not yell at Wrex to just drop it when a ruckus on the street outside drew their attention. Wrex instantly went for his gun, but it did nothing on the minor explosive that was suddenly thrown through the window. Only by good instincts did Kaidan cover them both with a biotic shield in time to spare them from burns.

Wrex shot out through the fire like a raging bull and by the time Kaidan caught up, he'd caught a fleeing Vorcha by the back of its neck. With a roar, Wrex slammed the body to the ground, with half his weight on the suspect. Kaidan cringed.

"Got him," Wrex called, as if anyone had missed that. As he got up again, the Vorcha hung like a ragdoll in his grip.

"I hope he's alive for questioning," Kaidan said, eyes falling to the attacker's open mouth, drool mixed with a bit of blood pouring out on his face.

"He's alive," Wrex assured, shifting the dead weight so it lay secure over his shoulder. "Vorcha don't die for nothing. Not fleshy soft like you humans. Speaking of fleshy soft - you really should take the situation with your salarian stalker to Kandros, or even Anderson. I don't like having eyes on us as we work."

Kaidan rolled his eyes at Wrex, even as he was silently considering it. Something wasn't right.

\---

For the first time since Shepard got abducted, Kaidan dream walked. He took his time, casually pushing through a few dreams before he remembered that Shepard was gone and would probably not find him. Not unless he was still on Omega somewhere. Remembering the Alliance clerk that had stated that Shepard had not left the station, Kaidan allowed himself a small hope and searched. As his control over the walking wasn't as good as Shepard's, it was a bit of hit and miss, trying to get to dreamers they'd both visited before. With Shepard normally leading the way, it was also possible that most of them were far beyond Kaidan's range. Using his worry as a motor, Kaidan pushed as hard as he possibly could, aiming at the volus up in the slums, but not even making it halfway. He didn't land in the pseudo-Irunian garden, but in some grand hall, filled with turians dressed to the teeth, glaring harshly at the dreamer who stood underdressed and shamed in a corner.

Moving on, Kaidan jumped dreams like clouds in the sky, barely landing on anything tangible before he moved on, unable to find familiar grounds or better yet familiar faces. Ultimately it was like the sky broke open, and he fell into a dream with concrete flooring. Looking up, he found himself in a rusty shed and there were some birdlike creatures in a corner, pecking away at something they sheltered with their wings. The dreamer wasn't in sight, but Kaidan could hear them pacing outside, walking circles around the house. He caught a glimpse as they passed a window. Once again a turian.

The calm and quiet suddenly broke as another person stormed into the shed, and she stared straight at Kaidan - eyes fierce and mouth twisted in a snarl. If it hadn't been a dream, Kaidan would've been certain he was about to be killed. The woman was human and petite, but every line in her body spoke of power far greater than her mass and the tattoos that covered most of the visible skin save for her face added some to the impression. Whoever she was, she was dangerous and unhinged.

"You," she said, and it sounded accusing. She was fast, gripping him around his collar with a tight fist, but she didn't attempt to harm him. "Follow me. Fast!"

Shepard had led Kaidan through dreams many times, but the sensation when the woman pulled felt more like being ripped out of bed and immediately tossed over a cliff. Kaidan felt motion sick within seconds and then suddenly he was separated from the woman, and falling.

He landed on the walkway outside his door, hard, and it took a while to realize he was still dream walking, with the details being so familiar and real. Kaidan felt a lurching sensation in his throat, but it stayed down for now.

Steve Cortez stood just outside Kaidan and Shepard's door. He was raising his hand, multiple times, then lowering it, as if trying to make up his mind whether to ring the bell or not. Kaidan was about to call out to the man, try gain his attention although it seldom worked on dreamers, when his stomach built up to another lurch. Somehow it did the trick, the sensation perhaps overwhelming enough to transfer, and Steve turned to spot him the instant before Kaidan woke up. Not yet fully conscious, he rolled to the side just in time to empty out his dinner on the floor instead of on the duvet.

Kaidan was halfway through cleaning the mess up when someone rang the doorbell.

"I'm coming," Kaidan called out, hoping they heard, because he wasn't meeting whoever was outside until the mess was gone and he'd at least washed his hands. There was a second ring, then a series of knocks before he was done. Wrapping a jacket around him to cover up into some semblance of modesty, he finally opened the door.

Outside stood Steve, hand raised to knock again, looking a little surprised and as groggy with sleep as Kaidan. They both just stared at one another for a moment, before Steve lowered his hand and took a step back.

"Come up to my place?" he asked, but it sounded more like an order than an offer. "I'll make tea."

\---

The modest apartment was as gentle as Steve's mannerism. It was smaller than the space that Kaidan and Shepard shared below, yet made good use of every square inch without seeming too cluttered. Neat like Steve's regulation hair cut, but homey like the laugh lines around his eyes. It felt natural to feel at ease around the man.

At the kitchen table stood a framed photo of Steve together with another man. They looked happy, genuinely happy rather than just making faces at the camera and the other man had a an arm leisurely wrapped around Steve.

"I'm sorry I entered your dream like that," Kaidan started once he'd stepped inside, feeling he had to apologize. He'd never had to talk to a dreamer about a dream he'd entered before, so this was sort of new territory. Steve had a patient, focused gaze as he spoke, but Kaidan could read nothing in it, not knowing the man enough.

"That's alright," Steve said, shutting the door behind them and leading way into the apartment. "It's not something you quite control, is it?"

There were only two stools in the small room, so it left little choice of where to sit, although Steve was polite enough to let Kaidan chose between the pair of them.

"I must've given you a really bad impression of myself, with these two mornings we've met," Kaidan continued, taking the stool nearest the door. "You've managed to catch me after a couple of my worst nights ever."

Steve hummed to himself, walking over to the kitchenette where water was now boiling. The offer for tea had apparently been genuine, and not just an excuse.  
"That first night... I haven't seen Shepard around since," Steve pointed out.

"Yeah," Kaidan admitted, as there was no point in hiding as much, even though he felt unsure of who he could trust with the details around the disappearance. He opted for a vague explanation. "He's away, for an undecided amount of time."

Steve hummed once again, as he prepared the leaves in the kettle.  
"I was wondering," he began, throwing a glance towards his bedside table. "Is Shepard perchance a biotic?"

Kaidan didn't know why, but he'd assumed that Shepard would've been open about this to another veteran; that the two would've exchanged stories of being in service - stories that Shepard hadn't even shared with Kaidan because Kaidan didn't share his Alliance background. Then again, Shepard could be a bit tight lipped about himself.

Kaidan hesitated, trying to decide whether this was his secret to tell or not, until he'd paused too long and Steve got the answer he was looking for anyway. The man left the tea pot to brew and walked towards the bed, reaching down and withdrawing a datapad that laid shoved underneath a medicine box.

"I was wondering whether to give you this," Steve said, clutching the pad before handing it over. "It felt important when I woke, but then, not knowing if he was biotic or not, I started to dismiss it as my own imagination."

Looking down on the pad, Kaidan saw lines of text, listed as bullet points.

"If Shepard truly disappeared that very night, then I believe my notes hold some importance," Steve concluded. "And that Shepard didn't leave of his own will."

The only reason Kaidan didn't react to Steve getting that right was because he was already reading the man's notes. Without context, they would seem ludicrous, because it was apparent that Steve didn't know how to distinguish between the elements of his dream and of what Shepard must've been trying to tell him. Some bits were easy to disregard, and Kaidan was especially helped by that one brief glimpse into Steve's bare cityscape dream, but other bits were more unclear. There were segments describing places on Omega that could be Steve's memory leaking into his dreamscape, or could equally well be places that Shepard had intentionally drawn Steve's attention to. Curiously, the red, spinning Armax Arsenal sign was noted in caps and bolded, followed by a note pointing out the angle had been _too low_. Then there was a note of a modified batarian frigate that was definitely interesting, but lacking in details to offer any clear leads. The final note raised some questions too.

"What do you mean, _he was ripped out of the dream_?" Kaidan asked, looking up from the notes. Steve was sitting again with a mug in his hand. There was a second mug on the table, placed close to Kaidan's right hand, handle angled at him. It smelled like tea, real Earth tea.

Steve took his time to find the right words.

"It was a sensation," he said, lifting his free hand as if to make a gesture, but then stopping halfway through as though he lost track of what he'd intended to do. "Like one moment he was there, fully present and the next he was gone. Not just him, but every little subtle change he'd brought with him too. As if he'd never existed in the dream in the first place. It was eerie. I woke shortly after that and went straight for the datapad before I was even awake enough to reflect upon what I was doing. It was strange."

Shepard had, since before Kaidan knew him, had this uncanny ability to pick up on the dreamer's emotional state. Kaidan had even seen firsthand how Shepard would mirror the fear of a dreamer in the stage of waking up into a bad situation. Perhaps Shepard had somehow figured out how to also do the opposite; to project his own agitation onto the dreamer. Kaidan didn't like what that indicated about what could've happened to Shepard, especially with how much time had already passed. In his work as a homicide investigator, he'd seen plenty of times how fast an abduction could turn into a murder. It also reminded him of the cold case, the girl that had been missing for years and how it had ended up in his and Wrex’s laps even though no one truly knew her ultimate fate. It made him think of how Jennifer’s parents only closure came in the shape of their own death.

"Mind if I keep this?" Kaidan asked, indicating Steve's datapad.

Steve nodded.

"I hope it helps," the man said, bringing the mug up to his lips but not drinking any. "He's a good man."

Kaidan nodded and the two fell into contemplative silence as Kaidan reread the notes, looking for anything new. When he glanced up, Steve had taken to staring at the portrait photo, of Steve and his late husband. Unwillingly the realization came to Kaidan, that in short time he could very well end up in the other man's shoes, alone and with nothing but mementos. He wouldn't even have a photo to look at though, only Shepard's abandoned but never used uniform jacket.

With new determination, Kaidan chugged down what remained of the tea, burning the back of his throat slightly in the process and grimaced. It was early, but the docks would be manned and Kaidan had just about enough time before work. A small voice in his head told him it was a fool's hope, but it was all the hope he had.

Steve tracked him with his eyes as he left.

\---

The docks were overloaded with crates and people, the cacophony too loud to be easily tuned out. The viewing screens were barely visible through the masses and Kaidan couldn't tell from this distance what exactly lay docked, but a lot of the crates were marked with Volus and Elcor registration numbers. As for the guards standing around, they were almost exclusively mercenaries, which to be fair was the norm on Omega.

Kaidan zigzagged through a throng of Asari locked in a heated argument as they slowly crossed the area. He barely dodged a hand gesturing wildly to emphasize a point as he caught sight of the migrations office that he was looking for.

With his O-Sec identification, it was easy to get his hands on traffic history from the night of the abduction. Just like with Steve Cortez's notes however the struggle lied in figuring out what was relevant and what was not, and there were five docking areas to cover, a couple of them quite far away from the rest. Only three of the areas had docking gates sized to fit frigate class ships though, which would limit things a bit _if_ the Batarian frigate mentioned in Steve's note had been the vessel the abductors had used and not just one they'd walked past. To get to the other docking areas, you could in passing very well have spotted a docked frigate. It was a truly flimsy lead, based on a dream no less. Kaidan tried to not let this thought quench what little hope he had.

Docking area A had housed two batarian frigates that night. One of them had departed only hours after Shepard's abduction while the other was still in port. When Kaidan inquired about the ship that was still docked, the docking manager only gestured at a screen that clearly explained why. What remained of the ship was merely a burnt out husk. Deciding to be thorough from the start, he requested surveillance on the departed frigate, but it had been packed before the time of the abduction and nothing but the pilot had entered the ship since. Area A was not entirely out of the picture, but Shepard had at least not been removed on a batarian frigate from any of the docks there.

Area B was for much larger vessels and Area C hadn't had any batarian frigates docked in nearly two weeks, so clearly not relevant. They also hadn't seen anyone that looked like Shepard, nor like his abductors. The docking manager here however, an old man with graying beard, seemed amused by Kaidan's questions.

"Why are you asking about humans boarding a batarian ship anyway?" he asked with a huff of a laugh, flicking back to live surveillance on the screens before him. All seemed calm and quiet, like any typical slow afternoon. "It's the most absurd inquiry I ever heard, and I've worked these docks for forty years."

"Absurd how?" Kaidan asked, deciding to humor the man. Kaidan had learnt many times over in his career to not underestimate the clues within stray comments, especially when they appeared to contradict his own assumptions. More than once it'd turned out to be the clue that broke the case for him.

"Because they're shite," the man explained. "No one but quarians will touch that crap. Anything human made will do the job, for a cheaper price and come with the bonus of being adapted to human needs. If you wanna waste money on some alien crap, batarian is not the way to go, pal, and anyone who knows ships knows that."

Kaidan considered this for a moment, if it disproved that particular detail in Steve's notes or if it could've been a conscious choice to throw off any pursuers. It seemed farfetched though, to use an unpopular alien ship, when they'd spent so much effort disguising themselves as Alliance - unless they'd been forced to abandon the uniforms en route to the docks. There were still too many details to make much more than guess work of the answers Kaidan needed.

He was about to leave, when another thought struck him.  
"You worked here for forty years, you said," he asked the manager, who seemed surprised that there were still things left to be said. Kaidan opened the cold case file on his omni-tool, navigating through the tabs to get to the pictures of the missing girl.

"Fortytwo, if you're really counting," the manager replied and crossed his arms, glancing down at Kaidan's arm. "Why?"

Something like recognition flashed in the man's eyes as Kaidan showed him the picture of little Jennifer, seven years old and with a toothy grin.

"I thought you O-Sec folks had given up on her," the manager said in response. Whether he was merely surprised or unnerved by the photo being brought up, Kaidan couldn't tell, but something about the reaction struck him as odd.

"We’re taking another look at the case," Kaidan said to legitimize his inquiry without offering any explanation. "You're familiar with it?"

The manager only huffed at this, a single scoff that shook his torso as he angled away and to the screens. It was a clear sign the man was done with the conversation. He did however turn his head, just to give his last words.

"The media was all over that case. Anyone who lived on Omega back then would know that little girl's face."

As Kaidan left, he glanced back over his shoulder to look into the window of the manager's office, noting he was being followed by a set of eyes the whole way. Kaidan opted for a bit of a detour then, wanting to escape the steady gaze as it unnerved him. It was probably nothing, the manager must've found him a little odd, but still. Maybe bringing up the girl now hadn't been the best of ideas. Time to return focus to Shepard.

Area D and E lay in the opposite end of Omega and could only be accessed by shuttle. Kaidan tried to get a shuttle from where he was, but none of the drivers there would take him, as word had spread quickly that he was with O-Sec. Someone must have overheard him speaking with the manager back at the docks.

"We no service sec-o-scum, haah!" one vorcha driver he approached declared, with a weird emphasis on _service_ , as though the word wasn't one he'd choose to use on his own _._ Kaidan had to jump back before the door slid shut on him and the shuttle departed with a wobble, fast and forcing meeting traffic to veer out of its way. Cursing under his breath, Kaidan then opted for public transport to the larger shuttle node. It would be quite a detour, but it couldn't be helped.

As Kaidan entered the commuter elevator that would take him the final fifty-three floors, the calls started coming in. First it was Traynor, but the request withdrew before he had the chance to accept. Then some unknown person with administrative rank within O-Sec called. The first time Kaidan just assumed it was someone who misdialed. There was an Alankar on the organized crime unit, and Kaidan had gotten calls for her before. When the person called again however, Kaidan was too stumped to pick up, trying to figure out what this could be about. Third time he accepted, hearing a harried voice at the other end.

"You need to come back to the station, immediately, Alenko," the person said, and Kaidan noted that he wasn't being addressed with title.

"If it's a case I could go straight to the scene, sir," Kaidan replied, mentally calculating how much of a detour he could potentially get away with, without anyone questioning the delay. He really wanted to check the remaining areas while he was at it, wanting answers, wanting to prove to himself that this lead that Shepard had sent to Steve was actually worth something, that there was hope yet.

"There's no case," the person on the line clarified, which put a bit of a halt on Kaidan's train of thought. "Executor Anderson has requested your immediate presence. For your own sake, I suggest you hurry. The orders are to come straight here."

"I will," Kaidan lied, even as he was mentally strategizing on how to later motivate the detour. It was a bit out of the way, docking Area E, but unless they kept strict check on his coordinates, he could get away with it by claiming he'd been further off on some ass-end of Omega, following up on the cold case.

The elevator stopped and most people exited, milling out into the masses moving around between the shuttles. As Kaidan got out, he glanced up in the direction he expected docking area E to be, but instead caught sight of the spinning Armax Arsenal sign. Dumbfounded by the unexpected find, he stopped dead on the spot. When people bumped into him and cursed, he didn't even notice, too focused on the large, red logo. It was almost straight above the shuttle pads, allowing for a  low angle view, similar to what Steve had found so important when he made his notes. Had Shepard been here? Had they taken him somewhere by shuttle? Where? Kaidan's mind got instantly busy trying to cover all the possible theories, and therefore he didn't notice the far end of the crowd shifting.

The masses didn't disperse, but people were being shoved out of the way. Kaidan only reacted when a crack of gunfire rang through the air. People ran and screamed, the way civilians did when caught in erupting chaos. There were also plenty of mercenaries around that drew weapons, and gang members who didn't scream but cautiously skulked away, navigating to safe spots too easily to not have been in gunfights before. In the whole mess, there was a handful of people running straight towards Kaidan. Somewhere in the background sounded a familiar, krogan roar.

Wrex bowled down two of the people running for Kaidan and wounded a third with a bullet to the thigh. Two more still charged and, panicking, Kaidan reaved one. The other fired a bullet straight at him. His ear rang from the noise, and as he managed to pull the shooter up in the air, he felt something wet flowing down his cheek and chin. As he examined the wound, Wrex reached him, dragging him off to an O-Sec vehicle parked not a block away. There were more officers on location now, securing the attackers. Kaidan was still trying to wrap his head around what just happened.

"What are you doing here?" was the first question he managed to get out as Wrex let go of him, allowing him to walk the last few steps up to the shuttle on his own.

"As soon as they mentioned Cerberus, I knew there'd be trouble stirring around you," Wrex replied, raising even more questions as he went. "So I tracked you down. Wouldn't want to miss out when something happens for once."

Kaidan wanted to know who _they_ were, but Wrex didn't quite seem to know what to answer to that.

"Anderson and... you'll see," was all Wrex offered, then silencing Kaidan by more or less slapping a towel in his face. "For the bleeding, pyjak."

\---

Kaidan had only been in the executor's office once, just before the former executor resigned to take responsibility for the Udina fiasco. David Anderson, who had led the organized crime unit up until that point, had been promoted to clean things up. Having an O-Sec commander who’d been bribed by Cerberus had been a disgrace that called for serious restructuring and robust countermeasures to prevent future corruption. While many had been unhappy with a human leading the whole service after finding out about Udina's connection to human supremacists, Anderson had by some miracle managed to garner most officers' trust. Kaidan didn't know the man well personally, but Traynor had always passionately vouched for him - and for what it was worth, the man had really kind eyes and a warm aura that made you _want_ to trust him.

The office was less decorated than it'd been in Executor Oraka's days, a modesty that fit with Anderson as the man's presence was enough to fill the room without random bits of regalia and trophies. Anderson stood as Kaidan entered, and waited for Kaidan to sit first.

"I'm sorry I didn't instruct my assistant to explain the urgency to you," Anderson offered as he seated himself behind his desk, the robust leather chair like a throne in the room - one of the few remnants from Oraka. Between the two men lay data pads and evidence bags that never would've found their way into the office under Oraka who'd been stricter about the hierarchy of the service, distancing himself from the details to focus on the overall picture. Perhaps that had been his downfall.

"I underestimated your commitment to your undertakings," Anderson continued. It was clearly an euphemism for Kaidan's stubbornness, for his attempt at defying direct orders. "Do you need me to call someone up to look at your ear?"

Kaidan removed the towel he'd pressed against the side of his face and looked at it. Most of the blood seemed dry and crusted by now, and it wasn't even as much as he'd expected, considering how long the graze had been.

"Thank you, sir, it's alright," Kaidan allowed, pressing the towel back in place, just in case. "It will keep until we're done."

Anderson nodded, although his eyes stayed on the wounded area a little longer.

"I'll cut straight to core of the matter," Anderson said, leaning forward in his seat and meeting Kaidan's gaze head on. "I've been struggling with how deeply to clue you in on this case for a while now, but you've quite efficiently placed yourself in the middle of it all on your own."

Anderson pressed something underneath the large desk, triggering a click behind Kaidan, and waved for someone to step inside.

Turning around, Kaidan's insides turned cold. Just inside the door stood a salarian in black gear with yellow stripes, his skin much greyer than most salarians Kaidan had ever seen and eyes like black pools. It was unmistakably his salarian tail.

"Council Spectre Jondum Bau," the salarian introduced himself, keeping a practiced posture that was neither casual nor formal. As if on second thought, he extended a hand to shake. Kaidan didn't take it. "I think we need to explain."

Anderson took over, but Kaidan kept his eyes on Bau, having no intention on turning his back before he knew exactly what the bastard was doing in the room.

"Spectre Bau reached out to us not two weeks ago, seeking permission to investigate on the station without our interference and we offered cooperation instead," Anderson explained. "He was following up on a branch of Cerberus interested in biotic applications, specifically the phenomenon of dream walking."

Kaidan did not like where this was going.

"I got tipped off that they had special interest in a human named John Shepard," Bau took ever. "And they were intending to abduct him for research purposes. I approached Shepard and recruited him into playing along with the abduction in order to infiltrate the facility."

"Are you mad?" Kaidan interrupted before he could stop himself. He spared a quick glance at Anderson who at least had the dignity to look contrite. "Shepard was _integral_ to exposing Cerberus' back door operations and supremacist agenda. He handed the _Aegues Leak_ into Aria's hands himself, not a year ago, and you can bet they all still remember. They'll tear him to shreds."

"I wasn't aware until recently," Bau confessed, his posture finally sagging a bit. "Shepard wasn't forthcoming with his role in the leak, and to be fair, O-Sec took all the credit."

It had been a precaution that Kaidan had insisted on, wanting to keep Shepard safe from stray agents who'd hesitate to take on a whole bureau, but not a single person. He'd never had hopes of hiding Shepard's involvement from Cerberus as a whole, but at least they had avoided painting a big, bright target on Shepard's back.

"Shepard was well informed of the risks and signed up willingly," Anderson attempted to placate, but Kaidan just shook his head, gritting his teeth to keep from screaming at Anderson and Bau both. He'd scream at Shepard too for being so stupid if he was only here.

"I'm sorry, I'm not crazy about this plan," Kaidan snapped. Bau and Anderson exchanged a look before they both look down.

"You're... right to be skeptical," Bau said. He fished something out a pocket and placed it on Anderson's desk. Inside a small container lay the remains of a tracking chip, the kind you could inject into your body. "We planted that on Shepard, intending to follow and monitoring him closely to assure his safety, but someone must've known. You've... seen the surveillance tapes. The whole operation has been in a standstill since."

The anger started dissipating into fear and Kaidan distantly noticed that he wasn't breathing quite right. His eyes remained focused on the chip, but didn't really take in any details and he dropped the towel that had a new smear of red on it. He must've rubbed open his wound somehow.

Shepard was gone, somewhere, in the hands of people that hated him and had already done him over enough times as it was. The situation wasn't real. Kaidan wanted it so bad not to be real.

"We've closely monitored all known Cerberus agents for the last month, and until today they've remained passive," Anderson spoke again. "We checked all surveillance on the docks, without finding how they got him off the station, but once you started asking around, Cerberus' people started mobilizing. Whatever inquiries you were making, they must've-"

"I asked about a batarian frigate, but it can't have been that," Kaidan interrupted, remembering the Armax sign, in a low angle. "They didn't leave through the docks. They took a shuttle somewhere."

In the background Anderson was ordering the relevant footage, asking whoever was at the other end to make it top priority. Meanwhile, Bau seemed interested to stay on the topic of his inquiries at the docks.

"What _exactly_ were you asking for, before coming here?" the salarian requested, his omni-tool ready to record notes.

Kaidan was still angry with him, still reluctant to trust him, but if it could help Shepard... he took a deep breath and did his best to summarize his inquiries. When Bau wanted to see the girl, Kaidan didn't question it. When Bau brought up a picture of another woman however, he stopped entirely.

"I've seen her," he said, baffled to see the tattooed dream walker in this context. She was bruised in the picture, but her glare was just as potent as in the dream. Attached to the picture was small blob of text. _Morpheus: Subject Zero_ , it said, and that was it. Then Bau aligned their arms and, while the girl and the woman looked vastly different, there were definitely symmetry that they shared.

"That's Jennifer?" Kaidan asked, barely a whisper as if the question would blow her existence away.

"Not certain," Bau admitted, stepping back so they could view the images side by side again. "But Cerberus reaction to your inquiry does support the theory. Morpheus is the project Shepard was intended for. If you saw _Subject Zero_ somewhere, that would be highly relevant to finding Shepard."

"She ran into me in a dream," Kaidan explained, resigned, because the encounter had been so brief that he'd learnt nothing useful from it. And saying it out loud, it even sounded ridiculous, but Bau seemed to take him with utter seriousness.

"Then they can't be too far," Bau comforted, igniting this tiny little hope because even Shepard's incredible range hadn't reached much further than to the slums, as far as they knew at least.

"Did you say a batarian frigate?" Anderson then interrupted and, looking towards the executor, Kaidan saw him surrounded by various projections of footage and in one of the projections, for a brief segment that kept looping, he could see Shepard. The man wasn't many pixels in the shot, barely visible in the large crowd at the shuttle node and surrounded by his three abductors. His head was listing to the side, but Kaidan found the man’s eyes were open as he was shoved into a shuttle that instantly took off.

"Yeah," Kaidan confirmed, a bit absent, losing himself in the loop. It wasn't much but it was the first that Kaidan had seen of Shepard in nearly a week. "It was modified."

"We might have caught a lucky break," Anderson informed, explaining something about a drug trafficking node the organized crime unit was monitoring and how a frigate matching the description had been marked when docked at the Vorcha slums… the very same slums the shuttle had whisked away toward with Shepard on board. There was a gap in surveillance post shuttle departure, meaning there was no fotage linking Shepard directly to that particular frigate. However, in the report the organized crime unit had noted a human staff on the batarian frigate, finding it suspicious, which was why it had at all meen marked and tracked. As a result, they now had the batarian frigate’s travel path mapped out, detailing numerous stops, before it had gone out of range. It could be coincidence, but it was too closely a fit to be ignored. Bau must have thought so too, as he contacted his crew, requesting they ready to ship out within the hour.

In the loop, Shepard kept disappearing like a mirage.

**\---**

As they set out to follow the path of the marked batarian frigate, Kaidan had at first felt optimistic. The tracker had pinged a couple of stops on the route that were minutes away from Omega, in other words potentially close enough to be within dream walking range of an especially powerful biotic human, but all these coordinates turned out to be a bust. Then the path led them towards the relay and Kaidan began to realize that perhaps he had hoped for too much. As they jumped to the Crescent Nebula, he was already convinced they were wasting their time.

Bau on the other hand insisted they followed the trail to its very end.

The last known coordinates left them in the middle of nowhere, on the outermost edge of a small solar system with only two planetary bodies circling a white dwarf. Neither of the two planets had habitable atmospheres, too cold to even allow brief landings. There was simply nothing to see. Bau, still not disheartened switched sensors, activating thermographic cameras. They stared at the screen in silence for a bit, Bau and members of his small team, while Kaidan stood dejected and waiting on them to just give up already. Then someone pointed out an area that showed a very discreet discoloration.

"There's something here," they pointed out, and Bau ordered the pilot to approach it. As they did, they returned screen view to regular cameras and flooding the seemingly empty space with light. After slowly creeping forward for perhaps ten minutes, they encountered a subtle shape, just before it flared up with light and their ship's defense systems started blaring.

"Find us a blind spot near a docking entrance, now!" Bau ordered, as the pilot started dodging incoming projectiles. Not having been outside Omega much in recent years, Kaidan felt momentarily a little sick at the sudden G-force, but then Bau dragged him off to an armor load-out station.

"Suit up, we're going for a walk," the salarian instructed, shortly before the ship slammed down onto a surface and stopped. Kaidan was impressed the ship was even stocked with human armor when all but two members of the crew were salarian. It spoke a lot of the resources on the Citadel.

Kaidan picked a blue suit and geared up as a handful of Bau's crew joined them.

\---

When the panic hit in waves, all across all available dreams, Shepard knew that something grave was going on. Grave for their captors - which in all likelihood meant grave for any captives as well. Cerberus was not the type of organization that shied away from committing war crimes to further their goals. Shepard had learnt as much on Akuze, and again over the past few days as a test subject in the Morpheus project.

Dreams were being ripped out of his grasp, one member of staff after the other coming awake in whatever chaos reigned above. Desperately Shepard clung to any mind he could reach, knowing that if they all came awake without him, he'd lose his chance. The drugs in him were strong, and he'd never before managed to force his way through them by following another mind in waking, but he had touched upon the edge of wakefulness and now there was the panic to aid him. With panic his body could potentially fuel up with enough adrenaline to counter the drugs. If he was lucky.

The first mind he tried was of a young scientist and he felt the surface so close, a sensation akin to having a scream lodged in his throat, his whole body tensing with it, but no sound coming out. Slipping back as the scientist rushed awake without him, he stumbled through a few more minds without success, coming to them all too late. Entering the remnants of their collapsing dreams was like landing on rugs as they were being rapidly pulled away.

Then he found a guard, progressing slower than the rest and who was fuelling up to a fight as she woke. Maybe she'd used sleeping meds, but something about her was closer to Shepard's own state, allowing him to mirror her in a way he couldn't have mirrored the scientist. It worked.

Waking up felt like an alien sensation, the laws of physics rigid and restraining like a cage. Before anything else, Shepard was aware of his sheer weight. Even his fingers felt heavy from disuse, and having been kept under for so long  he had to rediscover his body for a few moments. For someone used to waking up fast, it was disconcerting. Panic triggered his systems and adrenaline started pumping, giving him the kick-start he needed. A few disoriented seconds later he drew a gasping breath, shaking the last of the sleep paralysis.

Before he was even consciously aware of what he was doing, Shepard found the IV-line plugged into the veins at the back of his hand, ripping it out to sever the feed of sedatives that had kept him under for anything but minute long intervals since his arrival. More things were attached to his body - feeding tubes, uridome and electrodes, trapping him to the bed and he wasted no time in freeing himself from his medical prison. As he shakily pulled off wires connecting him to various electrographs, the monitors flat-lined, one after one. A single monitor kept spiking - the biotic sensor. It was first when taking notice of the readings that he realized there was a blue sheen emitting from his skin, like a turbulent and luminescent cloud of thunder.

He took a moment trying to calm himself, to get his biotics under control, but soon there were footsteps approaching out in the hallway and he fell back to his military training and experience. There was just enough time to arm himself with a cable and take position in the blind spot behind the door.

He didn't give the men and women who entered the chance to state their intentions. He'd seen the dreams of these people, their twisted work intertwined by lives often ordinary and mundane, all overclouded by values that were as extreme as they were dangerous. By now Shepard had enough knowledge to confirm what every fiber in his body was screaming at him - he wouldn't get out of this room without going for the kill. Perhaps the apathy he felt upon strangling the first person he got his hands on made him a lesser man, but he couldn't find it in him to feel bad.

Strangulation was however a slow way to off someone. Shepard was becoming quickly outnumbered, and while the first wave that had entered the room had been scientists and thereby manageable, there was a wave of guards storming towards the room now. His only mercy was that he must've held some considerable value still, as while the guards had firearms, none of them aimed at fatal areas. That's how he managed to down four of them in the hall before he made a mistake that cost him his footing. His hands had barely touched the metal floor panels before a heavy weight slammed down on his back. Only wearing a flimsy hospital robe, his ribs had little protection against the forceful pressure knocking the breath right out of him. The muzzle of a gun was placed against his jaw and he tried to muster a biotic surge, to push Cerberus people off of him, but was unable to get any control over the mass effect field that kept buzzing across his skin in panicked patches. Just as he relaxed in defeat, the muzzle swept away.

Down the hall echoed a battle cry, distinctly feminine and angry like nothing Shepard had heard in years. It was followed by an electric pang that he recognized as the sound wave of a biotic discharge. A handful of guards flew across the hall and over a railing at the end. The woman that came running in their wake was small and grimacing. Like Shepard, she was dressed in a robe that concealed little. Out from beneath every edge spread a compact pattern of tattoos and even her shaved head bore some marks.

"You're Jack," Shepard recognized then, a little stunned, having only seen the other captive while dream walking. In dreams Jack saw herself with make-up and customized gear. Most notably the tattoos in the dreams lost some of their details, especially on her back, while awake it was the make-up that had gone missing. Even so, it was clearly Jack.

Jack in turn seemed unimpressed with Shepard, head in the game and already searching the bodies around them for anything useful. She found some pants she liked, roughly pulling them off a body, not holding back on stomping the person in the crotch as she did. If anyone hated Cerberus more than Shepard, it was Jack. As if to emphasize this, she even spat on the scientist once she'd successfully retrieved his pants.

Shepard only remembered to stop staring and look for stuff for himself when Jack tossed off the robe, utterly unconcerned with her nudity. To be fair, as well covered in ink as she was, you could barely tell how naked she actually was.

They scavenged what they could for a couple of minutes, all the while hyper alert of any potential reinforcements. There were alarms sounding somewhere in the distance, but aside from that the hallways remained calm. Perhaps that was an omen they ought to take seriously, but for the time being it was a welcome respite.

"Here's a shotgun," Jack said, just a moment before she tossed the weapon at Shepard. They had never met up above before, but in short time they'd worked out a good pace between them in dreams so Shepard caught the weapon with ease. They'd made plans for this moment, should the chance arise; planned for multiple possible variables so they wouldn't lose a single precious moment. All along they'd known - they were just getting one shot at this and they were not going to waste it.

Having packed what extra ammo and supplies he could find, Shepard looked up, and stopped.

"There are plenty of shirts," he had to comment, because there were and not all of them had blood on them. Jack seemed to have found something that looked like a pair of shoulder guards that she'd managed to garner some coverage from, but it didn't leave much for imagination.

"I'm not running around branded like one of their fucking dogs," she explained, and fair enough, that didn't leave many options as the Cerberus logo was emblazoned on almost everything. Fortunately she seemed to have much better control over her biotics than Shepard and could use barriers to compensate for the lack of armor. Not having the same back-up option, Shepard had given in and strapped up in a vest, even though it had the despicable logo both front and back. Having already marked himself with that, he'd even kept going and grabbed a helmet. Better safe than sorry, and he could wear the crap if it allowed him to finish what he intended to do.

"Ready to go then?" Shepard asked, releasing the safety on the shotgun and testing the weight in his hands. Aim would be a bit tricky, as his left arm still felt partially numb from when the Cerberus lackeys had fried the omni-tool chip and sensors out of him back on Omega, but it'd do. He'd operated under far worse conditions to get his N7 designation.

Jack's answer was to head for the nearest flight of stairs. They'd never navigated these halls themselves, having been kept under almost the entire time, but through the dreams of the on-station staff they'd mapped out the area in considerable detail. While the dreamers skewed proportions a bit, depending on how important they found a section of the station, it was still easy to find their way based on the amount of doors and turns. The distances were sometimes off, but the directions remained the same.

They made it to the nearest computer node with ease, only encountering a couple of guards just as they arrived. Having far more to lose, Shepard and Jack fought much dirtier than their opponents and easily overwhelmed them. Shepard only wasted one shot with the shotgun; the numbness in his arm throwing him slightly off, the bullet hitting a console instead. Thankfully, it wasn't the only console in the room, but Jack still threw him a disapproving glare.

They dragged one of the scientists up to the main terminal and Jack pressed the dead woman’s hand onto the fingerprint sensor, lighting up the screen where Shepard proceeded to type in the most recent password he'd memorized from the lead researcher only the night before. It worked as expected, and they had full access to the main database. Prioritizing their fellow captives, Shepard began checking surveillance covering the cells, finding a disconcerting amount of children amongst them.

A few cells were empty, and hopefully they had always been, as there was no space in the plan for strays. All the cells were ejectable, a mechanism made for easy transport that Shepard intended to make good use of. As long as they all stayed in their cells, Shepard had a chance of saving them. With quick fingers he commanded all the cells into lockdown and switched focus.

There was enormous amounts of data stored on the station, so much of it relevant for bringing Cerberus down, but they would have to be selective on what to bring. It all had to fit on a hand-sized data core and as upscale as Cerberus tech was - large quantities of data still took time to transfer.

Shepard first isolated schematics for implants and the enhancers that had allowed Jack to piggyback her dreamwalking mind onto travellers jumping nebulas through the relays. He skipped calibration data, and moved on to footage from the labs, recordings of the experiments conducted. He exported as much as they could reasonably make away with into data packs that Jack would take outside of the facility. The schematics would allow them to safeguard against Cerberus-sympathising biotics, while the footage would prove Cerberus cruelty on a whole other level than any of the data or even the _Augeas Leak_ . _Augeas_ had given people the numbers to intellectually convince, but actual footage would sway people's hearts. That material _needed_ to get out there for any real efforts against Cerberus to happen.

Jack had found a data core that she connected to the terminal. It'd take a few minutes to complete the transfer, and in the meantime, they had to secure her escape route. They tried accessing live surveillance feed, but when the overtaxed terminal threatened to expel them from the system, they moved on to other options, not wanting to risk the data transfer. Managing to access traffic logs, they identified a docked supply ship that Jack could use. It seemed to be the only ship docked at present, which opened a door for Shepard that he had only considered before. Quickly he tabbed over to the transfer progress bar, giving them a rapidly falling countdown.

With a couple of minutes to spare, Shepard noticed that Jack was building up nervous energy that she attempted to fuel into rage. She was bouncing lightly on the spot, her fists tight as rocks and eyes locked on some unknown spot beyond the screen, like a predator imagining its prey.

Shepard had been here for days, preparing for this moment while Cerberus read his vitals in hope to crack what allowed him to do what he did. The rare moments he'd been awake, they'd treated him like an animal, or worse, like a machine. They'd talked over him, not to him, fed him through tubes to keep him alive in the most dehumanizing way possible - and they had done the same to minors. Combining this with Akuze, the rage that had built in Shepard had boiled over, pushing him over boundaries that he hadn't expected himself willing to cross.

Jack had been in this hell pit for years. How she could even breathe without burning up with the fury, Shepard wasn't sure he would ever understand.

The transfer signaled its completion. Quick, as though the signal had been a springboard, Jack snatched the data core and was about to start running. Shepard grabbed her by the arm just in time, forcing her to meet his eyes before storming off.

"Find Kaidan," he reminded her, having drilled this into her over and over for the past week. She had no reason to trust a stranger, and her only trust in Shepard right now seemed to lie in sharing a common enemy. Her motivation, even before her personal survival, was revenge but they both knew that their enemy didn't begin and end here at Morpheus station. This wouldn't end unless they cut the head off the snake and, to do that, Jack needed to get that footage into the right hands. This, they had agreed on, was Jack's job. Shepard's part of their joint plan was to rescue the other captives, so that at least their nightmare ended here.  

In lieu of an answer, Jack tore herself free and ran.

"Don't die," she tossed over her shoulder, which was affectionate for her. Fortunately she disappeared before Shepard  could answer or else his last words to her would've been a lie.

Returning focus to the screen, Shepard set a countdown to eject _all_ the pods, allowing just enough time to allow Jack to leave on the supply shuttle. The timing was important as ejecting the pods would temporarily override all communications, broadcasting evacuation alerts on all channels for a couple of minutes, preventing the station crew from informing others in the Cerberus network of Jack's escape. Once the pods ejected, he'd have a few more minutes to himself to gather the equipment he needed and get down to the station's power cores. After that, there'd be no other way to leave the station and every single bastard would burn. It would come at a price, but Shepard hadn't had time to find a better plan. This was the only way to give Jack and the intel a fair chance. At this stage Shepard was ready to pay any price for that.

\---

For all the alarms that were blaring all across the station, it was eerily empty. For a sick moment, Kaidan wondered if perhaps this wasn't the place at all, that this was merely an abandoned station and they'd simply triggered some automated defense program. Then they rounded a corner and found a hall littered with bodies, several of them carrying the same logo. Up closer, Kaidan recognized it as Cerberus.

"Seems like we're in the right spot," Bau said, voice raised to be heard over all the noise, and sidestepped a body that unlike most of the others had a bullet wound. The majority  looked to have been brought down by blunt trauma. Considering how the bodies were sprawled along the walls, Kaidan's guess was that someone biotic had thrown them and thrown them hard. Limbs lay at angles that were highly unnatural.

"Are they all dead?" Kaidan shouted, not noticing any movement whatsoever. With a quick scan one of Bau's colleagues confirmed that they were indeed all deceased.

Suddenly the entire structure hobbled. The alarms paused for a moment, then changed to something a little less loud, combined with lights dimming and pulsing in a slow pattern.

"What happened?" Bau demanded over the radio as scanned the area, his colleagues following his lead and doing the same. Kaidan searched the hall with his eyes, trying to see anything akin to a window or a screen, but the station seemed like a complete can, entirely isolated from the outside.

"They're evacuating?" Bau reacted to whatever report he was getting, eyes darting back and forth as though he was trying to figure something out. "Why are they evacuating?"

The crew on Bau's ship further informed them that a ship had taken off from the station, closely followed by the ejection of fifty-two pods. The ship had taken off at FTL speed instantly, before they'd gotten a decent reading of the ship. Bau's pilot reported receiving automated emergency hails from all the pods. A quick scan revealed that several of them contained humans, and some of them small. Children.

"Follow that ship," Bau ordered, before turning to Kaidan and his field team. "We need access to surveillance."

Kaidan couldn't agree more and followed the Spectre's lead in searching rooms ahead of them in the long corridor. On the way, Bau barked additional orders, requesting for back-up, both to the station and to aid for the occupants of the pods.

"Here," Kaidan shouted, alerting Bau when he found a room with multiple monitors and a couple of Cerberus guards slumped over in the seats in front of them. Whoever had went past these hallways before them had been very thorough. Getting close and seeing the guards' faces smashed in, Kaidan also added _very angry_ to his description of the attacker.

Bau seemed familiar with hacking, his omni-tool well equipped for the task, only taking a minute to bypass the locks on the terminals and to quickly search the screens for anything informative. Many places were entirely void of people, especially these long halls with lines of round hatch doors. The halls where the pods had been attached, Kaidan then realized, just before Bau found something of interest.

"Those are power cores," Kaidan commented, watching a figure in Cerberus gear running around attaching something that looked like primitive detonators to them. "They're blowing the whole thing up?"

"Erasing all evidence," Bau suggested as motive, calling up schematics to the screen, searching them with a finger, tracing the quickest route between their current position and the core room. "If they are willing to go that far, then there has to be something really important in this place. Let's go!"

"What about Shepard?" Kaidan protested, turning back towards the screen, flicking through more camera feeds, desperately searching for his partner. Bau impatiently beckoned him to follow from the door, already halfway out in the hallway.

"We won't find him if the place blows! Now come on!"

They ran and ran, as fast as they could, well aware that they had no clue how long before the person in the core room was done, if they'd even make it in time. Whatever was going on, it was a long while before they ran into anyone, and mid-run Kaidan couldn't decide whether that was fortunate or ominous. It was first when they hit the right floor that they started running into interference. Mostly they were guards, stumbling out of an elevator and firing at will. Kaidan hadn't been so thankful to be biotic in a long while, because the bullets ricocheted multiple times in the narrow, compact halls.

Bau used some salarian contraption that Kaidan had never seen before, setting up a shield that angled in direction wherever the largest concentration of movement was.  For a battle area as chaotic as this, it seemed highly efficient, until he got cornered. He then switched tactic, activating a more solid shield and kneeled behind it.

"Go to the core room," Bau shouted, and Kaidan did, shoving as many guards aside as possible to briefly clear the passage while Bau's team covered his back. The cores were visible from the hall, the room encased in large panes of glass. Through them Kaidan could see the same figure from the surveillance, close to finishing his work inside. As the door came ever closer, it was as though time slowed and all focus singled down on that straight path between them. As Kaidan got closer he could see the person inside in greater detail, lining up wires to connect the detonators, arranging for a synchronized trigger. Something about the way they moved was familiar, but there wasn't time to reflect upon it.

As soon as he had a clear shot, Kaidan fired. As if alerted by some sixth sense the person started turning just as Kaidan pressed the trigger, ending up taking the bullet in the side instead of the back. The person went straight down. Kaidan held his position for half a second, as the person attempted to push themselves up again before collapsing entirely.

There was a guard who'd been closer to the cores than Kaidan, that stopped, looking between Kaidan and the room as if confused. That pause became his downfall, as Bau shot him next.

"Don't let anyone else get inside," Bau ordered. The crisis was averted, but only temporarily. Anyone could get inside and finish the job.

Kaidan had to return focus to the immediate battle at his back however. One of the salarians had been downed, not two feet from him, gasping in short, labored breaths on the floor. Kaidan had medigel, but it was long since he’d done his first aid field training and there wasn't even time to locate where the wound was. If it weren't for the thick armor that Bau had lent him, Kaidan would've been grazed by bullets himself, multiple times already.

"We've intercepted the ship to the Crescent Nebula, but it's been abandoned," came across the com, from Bau's pilot. "We managed to catch a trail of an intersecting vehicle, possibly a pick up. Fuel trails indicate a course towards Tasale system. Do we pursue?"

There were more guards storming down towards the core room.  

"How far is back-up?" Bau asked, as their group repositioned into some place they could better defend. It was buying them time, but if enemy reinforcements flanked them, they'd be screwed with the current odds.

"They only just embarked from the Citadel," came the answer and Kaidan didn't know how long that meant exactly but from Bau's cursing he understood that it wouldn't be fast enough. "There wasn't anyone closer."

"Request assistance from Illium to investigate the pick-up and get back here," Bau ordered.

From what Kaidan knew of Illium, that assistance simply wouldn't happen and judging by the look on Bau's face, perhaps he knew that too.

Another member of Bau's team sat wounded behind Bau's shield and the Cerberus guards kept coming at them. At this rate, they might not make it off the station even if Bau's ship returned in time. While their position was fairly easy to guard, it was also tricky to escape. Furthermore, if they left there was no one to stop Cerberus from finishing what they'd started. Kaidan had already shot three guards trying to enter the core room. Cerberus seemed adamant to get there.

It was then Kaidan saw him.

One of the salarians called Kaidan's attention to the other side of the core room. Through the glass on the other side was a myriad of movement, all of a sudden. A massive group, too many to count. Cerberus must've gotten reinforcements in place faster than them, meaning their bleak outlook turned even bleaker, but that wasn't what Kaidan's eyes caught on.

An arm wrapped around his middle and leaning heavily against a panel with levers stood Shepard, staring straight back at him. His mouth was hidden beneath the mouth guard of a helmet, but his eyes looked tired; pleading words that Kaidan couldn't read from afar. It was a look so painfully reminiscent of the last look they'd exchanged as Shepard had been abducted. Resigned. Sorry.

Then Kaidan took in the rest of Shepard's appearance, the gear he was wearing, the placement of his hand and the blood spilling over his fingers. Kaidan was sick of going cold with realization, of catching up with the truth far too late.

"ETA three minutes," Bau's pilot informed over the radio. In three minutes they'd all be overrun by the Cerberus reinforcements, soldiers rather than mere guards by the look of it. They could only hope at this stage that Cerberus took prisoners because they were only seven still standing against at least fifty.

Shepard then shook his head, and Kaidan was still trying to understand why when Shepard pulled one of the levers. One of the cores detached, wires ripping away as the large, heavy cylinder hit the floor. With a movement sluggish compared to his usual commanding poise, Shepard reached up to the top of the panel he was leaning against, grabbing one of the detonators.

"JOHN!" Kaidan yelled at the top of his lungs, but Shepard's only response was to trigger a fire door lockdown between them, leaving but a single passage to the core room open - the one on the opposite end where the approaching Cerberus crew were lining up and taking aim. They'd paused their approach, officers doling out orders with hand signals from strategic spots as Shepard slapped the detonator onto the side of the detached core.

Kaidan ran up to the glass, the guards still in the vicinity be damned, trying to force his way in, but the glass was sturdier than it looked. Through the windows he could see Shepard grabbing a pipe, shoving it beneath the core before he heaved. Nothing happened at first, but then slowly it started gaining momentum. About forty feet out of the core room, it disappeared in complete inferno.

For a terrible moment, all Kaidan saw of Shepard was a disappearing silhouette, with only a flicker of blue keeping him visible through the fire.

Then the flames were sucked away. It looked like watching the explosion in reverse, but at the end of it was a giant breach in the station's hull. The vast majority of the soldiers were gone, all burned or spaced. Shepard was slipping, pulled by the enormous vacuum of space. He'd wrapped a wire around his waist, but it snapped, and he was drawn towards the hall until he caught himself with his left hand on an edge.

"We're in range," came across the com, but Kaidan only had attention for Shepard who grimaced in pain, just before his hand slipped and he disappeared out into the dark.

Kaidan was ready to throw himself out there, but Bau's colleagues were holding him back. They tried to restrain him while shouting platitudes that meant to sooth, but Kaidan didn't want them. He wanted to act. Then he heard Bau, in the background:

"Did you catch him?"

Kaidan froze and held his breath in anticipation.

\---

Various spaces flashed by, both large and small. It was curious how in the acceleration sensations started filling in where visual details blurred. It wasn't much, but for the first time Kaidan felt the brush of foreign emotions against him like feathers and on one rare occasion like a launched fist just missing his cheek. He was still no good at moving between dreams with intent, but he'd accomplished speed. At first he'd slowly perused each dreamscape, wanting to explore every corner, leave no stone unturned. With time both patience and hope were running thin however, the rivers down to trickles. Hence he ran aimlessly, like a panicked loon, almost forgetting what he was doing amongst dreams at all.

He stumbled, not with his feet but with his mind. It was like his concentration getting caught, like a belt hoop in a door handle, bringing him to an abrupt stop. While he still stood on his two feet in the dream, it felt like he'd tumbled to the ground to lay there stunned, if unhurt. He almost felt a bit motion sick.

Looking around, the landscape he saw was lush and detailed, vegetation wrapping around buildings that looked too big even though they were perfectly human sized. Why did they feel too big? The plants had the wrong blue tint, while the color of the sky was also off. There was a flower with petals in a deeply saturated red that stuck out with how it felt perfectly familiar. Kaidan reached out to touch its outer rim. When the petals snapped shut, it felt like a cog slotting perfectly into place. Kaidan looked up, and around, seeing a salarian dreamer with family, and beyond them, up to the waist in water stood a sole human.

There were so many things Kaidan wanted to express, ranging from relief to worry, from joy to sheer anger. What it all boiled down to, as the water splashed in cascades out of his way, were his fists gripping hard at the collar of the other man's jacket. There Kaidan stuck, like a pebble of something unspoken had lodged itself between the cogs. The water stilled around them and all the mechanical motion built up as he'd moved across the dream simply jammed in that moment of indecision, of overwhelming emotion at finally having Shepard before him again.

Shepard just stood silent, expecting, but Kaidan could see his chest rapidly rising and falling. Good. They were both feeling the strain of the aftermath.

"This better mean I'm not dead," Shepard ultimately said, when Kaidan failed to voice the words that caught in his chest. Hearing Shepard's voice again however was like a trigger, and the monster that'd been ravaging at Kaidan's mind for past two weeks now freed itself, exploding out of his mouth and into every fiber of his body.

"Don't _ever_ do that again," he grit out through clenched teeth, boring his fists hard into Shepard's shoulders and still clutching the jacket so hard his knuckles were turning white. "Don't leave me behind like that, not knowing a thing. Don't do that to me."

Somewhere between the second and the last _don't_ , Kaidan's voice lost its rage, shattering into something fragile and Kaidan couldn't bear looking into Shepard's eyes anymore. He pulled his forehead down until it touched Shepard's clavicle and stayed there, shaking. After a few moments, he could feel hands wrapping around his, fingers gently caressing his skin instead of trying to pry his grip open. It soothed something in him, even if he was yet unable to quite let go.

"Talk to me," Kaidan demanded. He could feel as well as hear the deep breath Shepard took as he prepared.

"I'm N7," he started, and it was so unexpected that momentarily Kaidan forgot how angry he still was. "When Spectre Jondum Bau approached me, explained what he needed me to do, it felt like a perfect fit, what I'd been waiting for. I did similar things getting my N7 designation, and more than that, it offered that sense of purpose I couldn't find with the Alliance anymore. And of course, it was a chance to start unraveling Cerberus. I couldn't say no."

Kaidan's anger returned, refocusing on the first thing that he was mad about. He stood straight again, pinning Shepard in place with their eyes locked on one another. They were close enough that Shepard's gaze flickered, back and forth between Kaidan's right and left eye.

"That night, I called it, that something was different, but you didn't tell me."

When Shepard looked away at this, Kaidan's hands abandoned Shepard's jacket to frame his cheeks, forcing the other man to face him again. They were not backing away from hard topics again. Not after this.

"I was afraid you'd stop me," Shepard admitted. "And that I would've listened. Cerberus must be stopped, but... I love you, Kaidan. You have no idea how hard it was to leave."

Kaidan was left a little breathless. That was the first time either of them had said those words to one another. It kind of rendered everything else irrelevant. They still needed to talk, about so many things, but maybe for now it wasn't all that important.

"I love you too, John," Kaidan spoke, voice barely above a whisper and the words ached brilliantly in his chest. "That's why I need you to wake up."

As precious as the moment was, Shepard looked as though he sobered a bit at that.

"Where am I?" he asked. The fact that he didn't even glance away from Kaidan's eye underlined that he wasn't speaking of the dream, but what had happened to his body.

"You're at Huerta Memorial on the Citadel," Kaidan explained. "You were spaced for nearly half a minute before Bau's team managed to pick you out of the debris. You're physically on the mend, but you need to wake up. Come back to me."

Shepard's gaze locked on Kaidan didn't even waver as he nodded, determined. As they left the dream, they plunged down through the water together, drawing gasping breaths of air as they arrived on the other side - awake.

Sitting up straight in the hard, plastic hospital chair, Kaidan's eyes instantly found Shepards. With the tubes stuck down Shepard's throat, they couldn't talk with words yet, so Kaidan laid his hand on top of the healing bullet wound in Shepard's side, to admit his guilt and to ask forgiveness that Shepard granted with a hand of his own. As the monitoring equipment alerted the staff, the two of them to took comfort in each other through their clasped hands.

\---

_Three weeks later_

"How does it feel?" Traynor asked over the com, as Kaidan packed up. "It's gonna be a bit of a role reversal for a while, won't it?"

Kaidan agreed, but he didn't mind that so much. Moving away from all his friends was the bigger deal. He could always find a new job, one way or another, but Traynor would be sort of irreplaceable.

"Both Bau and Anderson have offered me some stellar recommendations, so I might actually have a chance at working in C-Sec," he assured Traynor, looking around the apartment at what remained. It wasn't much, but then again they hadn't had much to begin with. The furniture would stay, as it'd cost more than it was worth to send them along, though Kaidan had been tempted to splurge on shipping the couch because of all the memories, but oh well, they'd make new ones.

"But they're making Shepard a Spectre?" Traynor asked again, for the third time during this call alone. Kaidan only hummed now, whenever someone asked, although it was quite amazing that a human was considered for such a prestigious position. It would make the first ever, if they found him agreeable.

"He's only presented as a candidate," Kaidan clarified, again. "There's like a paid trial period and if he's impressive enough, he's on, but if not, then... I guess then it will be back to square one. We'll sort it out, somehow. I really want this chance for him though, you know?"

"Uh huh," Traynor agreed, sounding a little dreamy and teasing at once, the way she did when she found Kaidan's reasoning to be especially sweet.

"What was it Miranda called him?" she asked, sounding nostalgic. "Your shabby pub flirt? Sounds more and more these days like she grossly underestimated the thing between you. If you marry, you invite me to the wedding, and I get a say in choosing the cake. Deal?"

Kaidan laughed, as he did when Traynor heavily hinted at long term commitments. Maybe marriage wasn't where they were heading, but more and more, Kaidan could imagine them growing old together. It was a strange thought, to be honest, but not unpleasant.

Someone rang the doorbell, and Kaidan frowned.

"Gotta go," he said, and they ended the call. Not expecting any visitors, he made sure to check the spy hole, feeling the holster concealed on his back. Seeing who it was, the hand instantly fell away. As he opened the door, it felt a little like looking at a mirage.

She was heavily dressed for a change, wrapped in some huge coat that didn't fit her at all but concealed her very recognizable tattoos. In one hand she held a duffel bag. Kaidan decided to take a gamble.

"Jennifer?" he asked, and the reaction was instantaneous. The woman dropped the duffel, and from the noise there were clearly weapons in there, and her eyes opened wide and shocked.

"How the hell do you know that name?" she hissed through her teeth. Kicking the bag between Kaidan's feet, she pushed her way inside as Kaidan began to explain. It started out with him covering what was on record regarding her abduction, and with Jennifer, or Jack as she preferred to be called now, closing the case for him. At the end she handed him a data core.

"I wanted to blast this on every screen across the galaxy, but Shepard insisted you need to see this first," she explained, before letting go of the core.

Kaidan didn't know what to expect from that, but accessing the data through his omni-tool he found it to mainly contain video footage. Aside from the vids, there were staff profiles in abundance and all Cerberus. He flicked through them, coming to a halt at a name that was hauntingly familiar.

"Henry Lawson," he read out loud, staring at the attached photo, trying to see any familiar traits, yet finding none. What he did find was that the man had been responsible for the entire Morpheus project.

Then Jack suddenly plopped down in the couch next to him, locking him in place with a surprisingly strong arm around his shoulders.

"Say _shit_ ," Jack said, in lieu of _cheese_ and sported a face that looked more like a growl than a smile, even as the corners of her mouth were tugging undeniably upwards. Caught off guard, Kaidan sported a dumbfounded look in the final photo, but Jack seemed happy enough with it, sending it off to Shepard, coupled with the message "Found your man."

In the middle of a meeting with the human ambassador on the Citadel, Shepard smiled a small private smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I can promise already now - there WILL be a third installment. Sequels are fucking hard, so I can only hope this fic lived up to your expectations. Work really came biting me in the ass this MEBB, with a whole load of drawbacks, emergencies and unexpected problems and for a while I honestly thought I wouldn't make it it in time. I hung in there though and hope the fic didn't suffer too much as a result. It has been a joy writing and I can honestly say that writing this fic has been the one I've done as self care this year. Once again - thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> Now go gush over lehonk's art over on tumblr where he can read it!


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